Southern Conference and Sun Belt Conference Championship Games Preview

The regular season is officially over, and every basketball game is now a conference tournament battle. For this blog entry I am only going to preview the two conference championship games this evening. No new conferences tip off Monday, so you won't see any new teams in action today. 🏀

Sun Belt Championship Game (6:00 PM CST)

I will never understand why these conferences don't get together to discuss staggering the times for their conference championship games. Both conference championships are at the same time today. (2) James Madison with play (4) Arkansas State, with James Madison being our pool favorite with almost 66% of the picks. James Madison is also the analytics favorite, having a 44% chance to win this tournament before it even tipped off. This matchup does not mean much for our pool with so much action on James Madison, but a loss by the 2-seed would be helpful for people in the top 20 like Balls Boy, Ryan, Robb, and Pizzy who were on teams that already lost. James Madison is a 5.5-point favorite, I thought they would be favored by more, but I see them winning easily tonight. 🐶

Southern Championship Game (6:00 PM CST)

This is the championship game to focus on tonight as 6 of the top 10 players in our pool are already out. It's a great opportunity for the standings to tighten up, and for a few people to catch Matthew. (1) Samford will play (7) Eastern Tennessee State in what looks to be a lopsided matchup. Samford is a 10-point favorite telling me the oddsmakers don't even think this will be a game. If that holds true, 4 people are going to be within 1 point of Matthew. Samford is our popular pool pick, and the analytics pick, everything is working against Eastern Tennessee State. However, if Eastern Tennessee State pulls off a miraculous upset, nobody in the pool gets a win, and one more conference tournament is marked complete for Matthew. 🐶

We will still have plenty of other meaningful action tonight as we have 4 conferences in the semifinals, and numerous other conferences in the quarterfinals. By action, I mean we will see plenty of losses and red on the standings. Although games don't tip off until 5:00 PM CST today, it will be a late night. In the West Coast Conference (2) Gonzaga vs. (3) San Francisco doesn't even tip off until 10:30 PM CST. 

The current standings include a few late night Sunday upsets with both (3) North Dakota and (2) Northern Colorado going down, resulting in 4 pool losses. As always, I'll update and post standings tonight when I have meaningful updates, and be on the lookout for at least one blog entry.