Conference Tournament Previews (Update)

I’ve posted the Conference Tournament previews on the left side of the site (or pulldown). Nothing too fancy and I think most of the data is correct so that’s a first for me.

!!! Updated !!!

This morning while I wait for the regional rankings to drop, I started to get my selection eve house in order. I have some spreadsheets that I like to use that help me go through the selection process and they all needed updating.

One resource that is really valuable is on Ricky Nelson’s site. He has all of the Conference Tournaments listed with the dates they play and who has the #1 seed. You can find that info, here.

As I went through the Week 2 Regional Rankings and the conference tournaments I found some interesting tidbits that I wanted to pass along. I decided to reuse this post to do it.

• Of the 44 automatic qualifiers, 43 are earned through a tournament. Only the NWC uses the regular season standings and Whitworth has already won it.

• Of the 43 tournaments, the #1 seed is regionally ranked 32 times.

• That means there are 11 tournaments that will result in an automatic qualifier to a team that wouldn’t be considered for the tournament otherwise. (I’m a fan of the AQ to a point but I’m a bigger fan of making sure the at-large bids go to the best teams.)

• None of the 11 conference tournaments with no regionally ranked #1 seed had another team from the conference that was regionally ranked. That can happen but it’s rare.

• 9 of the 32 conferences that have a tournament have no other regionally ranked team other than the #1 seed. These are the scary tournaments. If there is an upset then it’s these tournaments that can cause an at-large bid to be used for a team that otherwise wouldn’t get it.

• Some regionally ranked teams have already been eliminated from their tournament (or didn’t qualify). They include Western Connecticut State, Wellesley and Rutgers-Camden. Typically not a good sign for these teams but we did have a year in the West where Whittier didn’t qualify for their tournament but still made the tournament over teams that did.