Yet Another Twist: The NCAA Is Letting Conferences Decide Whether Their Regular Season Or Conference Tournament Champ Gets The NCAA Tournament Bid
Now let me be clear about something. This isn't a new concept. We went plenty of years where the Ivy League didn't have a conference tournament and sent their regular season champ. What is new is this February 26 decision date. That is fascinating to me. Why? Because we'll see a clearer picture in the next two weeks, especially for mid-majors. We'll see bubble teams win/lose games and get a better idea if a team like Loyola is looking like a for sure at-large team or a potential bubble team. Shit, we'll know more about that after this weekend and their series against Drake, which is as big of a mid-major series we'll see all year.
It should be noted that this was somewhat expected. There had been rumblings of a Feb. 26 decision date for a couple weeks now so conference commissioners have started planning what decision they want to make. If you ask me, if I'm a mid-major and I have a for sure best team, I want them in the NCAA Tournament. It's strictly a money play. Someone like the OVC should WANT Belmont to be the autobid and there's a chance they could clinch the regular season title before that Feb. 26 cutoff date. Belmont is currently projected as the top 13 seed and it's not crazy to think they can pull off an upset. Again, a money play here. Would you rather have Belmont in or let's say there's mayhem and Jacksonville State wins the conference tournament and ends up as like a 15 seed?
It doesn't really make sense for the bigger conferences to send their regular season champ. They'll get multi-bids and if someone steals an autobid from their conference - think Georgia in 2008 - it won't hurt nearly as much as a mid-major. The only conference that could see something weird is the AAC where it feels like Houston is the only true tournament team, Wichita State and SMU are both on the next four out line. That's where the line in Norlander's tweet is huge.
'The committee expects full participation if there's a conference tournament.'
If you're the AAC, you want to make sure Houston shows up for it. You don't want to take the risk of pissing off the committee and potentially getting hurt in seeding. We're still talking about humans here. If I had to guess we'll see maybe 3-5 at most decide to send a regular season champ. It ultimately comes down to money, but my biggest problem is the unbalanced schedules. Too many leagues don't play a true round robin, is it truly 'fair' to send the regular season champ? At least with a conference tournament everyone has a chance to play. We've seen conferences say they are still going with the conference tournament as of today, most without fans, but they now have 2 weeks to reverse a decision if they want.
