Really, Ivy League?
1. Ivy League
You know what? I’m starting to think that we’ve been overestimating the value of an Ivy League education for decades now. I’m basing this entirely off the fact that the conference holds a four-team tournament at a pre-determined on-campus location.
None of this works.
If you’re capping the field at four, you may as well go back to the old 14-game tournament days. And if you’re going to have play the games on a campus site, at least have the advantage for the host school be an earned one. Also, at least make sure the host school is actually going to be a participant in the tournament, which won’t be the case this year when the tournament takes place at Brown.
You people baffle me. You spend all your money on these fancy conference tournaments, you surround yourself with ‘em, and they’re the wrong fuckin’ conference tournaments.
The No. 2 seed has won this tournament five years in a row, and the only time the No. 1 seed has won it was way back in its first year of existence in 2017. If that trend hols true — despite 12-1 Yale being four games clear of every other team in the conference — it’ll be an absolute shame.
2. Mid-American
Tired: Being mad at leagues for automatically advancing their best teams to the tournament semifinals.
Wired: Being mad at leagues for leaving a chunk of their teams at the bottom of the conference standings out of their tournaments entirely.
I have come around on the idea of protecting your best teams and giving them the best shot at earning the league’s auto-bid … so long as you set your tournament up in a way that at least gives everyone a shot. Is it extremely unlikely that Southern Miss is going to rip off seven wins in seven days to win the Sun Belt? Of course, but that’s the price you pay for being the 12th-best team in a 14-team league.
But at least you get the opportunity to play until you lose. That’s what this sport and this postseason are supposed to be about.
The MAC, conversely, keeps the bottom four teams from its 12-team league out of its conference tournament entirely. They aren’t the only conference doing something like this, but they’re the league with the most consistently competitive lineup from top to bottom, and therefore the most egregious offenders.
Someone is going to go 8-10 in conference play and get left out of the league tournament. That seems silly and easily avoidable.
It’s one extra day of basketball. No one is going to complain about it. Grow up.
3. Big Sky
This used to be because a top two seed had won this tournament in seven straight years and the No. 1 seed had won in 10 of the last 13. That changed last year with Montana State making a great run as the 5-seed and taking down 3-seed Montana to win the title.
Now this is all about the fact that I haven’t been sent a “Starch Madness” shirt.
I would like a Starch Madness shirt.
Also, Northern Colorado vs. Montana would be a fantastic title game.
