This will be the final week of the regular season with 18 conference tournaments taking place on both the men’s and women’s side. Of the 18 conferences playing tournaments this week, the only two that don’t have both the men and women playing are the SEC and the Patriot League. The SEC women played last week while the men will play this week and the Patriot men played last week while the women will play this week. The only conference that doesn’t hold a tournament is the Ivy League.
There have been 24 conference tournaments that have been played so far and in those 24 tournaments the No. 1 seed has won 20 (.833) times. The only teams to win that weren’t a top seed were Florida A&M (M-#2), Florida Gulf Coast (M-#4), North Florida (W-#2), South Florida (W-#7) – interesting that they are all from Florida! In 2016, the top seed won 38 of the 62 (.613) tournaments so that number is definitely trending much higher this year. To see a full list of winners so far click the links below for my conference tournament pages.
If you haven’t checked out my conference tournament central pages you’ve been cheating yourself because I’ve got all the links and info that you need in one place – won’t find that anywhere else. Here is the link for my men’s page and here is the link for my women’s page. Some of the conferences don’t play a full round robin and are waiting for the ITA rankings to come out tomorrow because in many cases those are used to determine seeding. I’ll continue to update my pages as all the draws become available.
Men’s Power 5 Storylines
Big 12: Oklahoma is hosting and with Andrew Harris back in the lineup we saw what is possible after they took Oklahoma State to the woodshed on Saturday. OU gets Texas in the first round and if they win that they’d see the red-hot regular season champs TCU in the semis. Meanwhile you’ve got Texas Tech and Baylor getting ready to play for the second time in five days – will be interesting to see how it goes this time on a neutral court. I know Oklahoma State didn’t look good against Oklahoma but they’ve probably been the most consistent team all season so you can’t count them out either.
ACC: Wake Forest was the dominant team in the regular season going 12-0 and while Virginia and North Carolina are on the other side of the draw it looks like Wake will probably meet a Georgia Tech team in the semifinals that had them on the ropes a few weeks ago. Virginia is back to full strength so you’ve got to consider them the co-favorite, North Carolina went 22-3 this year but they’re ranked outside the top 10 so they want to make a move, Georgia Tech is playing less than an hour from home, and you’ve Duke that’s putting it all together down the stretch despite not having its top player in the lineup due to injury.
Big Ten: Pretty simple – can anybody stop Ohio State? Illinois came close on Sunday but that was on its home courts. If Ohio State plays it’s A game they roll through the tournament yielding no more than 1 point.
SEC: This one is wide open – Texas A&M and Georgia are the teams to beat however Florida, South Carolina, and Mississippi State will be contenders too. Tennessee is hosting and they get a struggling Kentucky on Thursday so if they can pull an upset they’ll be close to qualifying for the NCAAs as an at-large.
Pac-12: UCLA and Cal are the top two seeds and they both gets byes into the semifinals but USC, Oregon, and Stanford will each have a chance to make some noise too. I’d actually be surprised if both UCLA and Cal advance to the final because I think one of those other three will rise up and make a run.
Women’s Power 5 Storylines
Big 12: Texas Tech and Oklahoma State are both pretty heavy favorites to meet in the finals after going a combined 16-2 in Big 12 play during the regular season. Can Texas Tech win its first-ever Big 12 Championship after finishing as runner-up the last two years or will Oklahoma State repeat?
ACC: Georgia Tech was at the top of the standings the entire season but a 4-3 loss at Duke on Sunday knocked them all the way to a No. 3 seed after losing out in a tiebreaker to North Carolina and Duke. Not 100% sure what the tiebreak was but I think it was point scored against the tied teams and since UNC beat Duke 5-2 and the other matches were 4-3 they won it that way leaving Duke and Georgia Tech tied for second and since Duke won the H2H they got the No. 2 seed. If another tiebreak scenario was used then please chime in!
Big Ten: The Ohio State women are big favorites with Michigan the only team that can remotely challenge them. Ohio State and Michigan did play this season with Ohio State winning 5-1 however it was a non-conference matchup so that’s why both teams are showing 11-0 Big Ten records.
Pac-12: This will be the first-ever women’s conference tournament with the individual tournament going by the wayside. Anything other than a Stanford/Cal final would be surprising.
SEC: Can Vanderbilt win the tournament as a top seed over top ranked Florida – wait that one already happened – congrats Dores!
The final published rankings of the regular season come out on Tuesday – if you want to get ahead of the curve you can check out my projections here – only for CTT subscribers so if you aren’t onboard yet now is the time!
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