Conference Tournament Primer

Conference Tournaments. Some love them. Some hate them (me, me, me). Regardless, they are important, given they will give us a large chunk of the NCAA Tournament field. Some are more important than others though and given most fans are fans of power conference teams, I am going to give you the teams to root for and against in many upcoming tournaments. Tournament by tournament.

Power Conferences

ACC – March 8-11

Protected Seeds Rooting for: Favorites. A surprise winner here would certainly be seeded around 13 and could send a quality mid-major champion further down the bracket. No 3-seed wants to see a team like the MAC champion drawn across from them like Georgetown did as a three a few years ago (the Hoyas were stomped, badly).

Bubble Teams Rooting for: Favorites. There are bubble teams all over the place in this league. Other bubble teams understandably don't want those teams like Miami to win a game in the conference tournament.

Big East – March 6-10

Protected Seeds Rooting for: Any of the collection of middling bubble teams on the low end of the conference bracket. Those teams have tons of bad losses, but also good wins. Better to see them seeded as high as possible to get the teams full attention.

Bubble Teams Rooting For: West Virginia, Cincinnati and UConn to crash out early. Let's be realistic. The worst teams that have any prayer here are at the least on the bubble, but those same bubble teams will have difficult early matchups that could be quite costly if they become losses.

Big 12 – March 7-10

Protected Seeds Rooting For: Baylor to crash out early. Baylor crashing out could open a protected seed for somebody else. Other than that, the top of the bracket doesn't really care here (assuming Texas isn't winning this thing).

Bubble Teams Rooting For: Kansas-Missouri 3. Everybody wants to see this game and this would also eliminate a bid thief (say Oklahoma St. who has looked decent and beat both Missouri and Texas this season).

SEC – March 8-11

Protected Seeds Rooting For: Kentucky to dispatch of Florida and Vandy. The other teams up top don't want Florida and Vandy making a run at a top four seed and they prefer Kentucky go into the tournament as the heavy favorite. Flying under the radar is good.

Bubble Teams Rooting For: A tournament that actually goes to form. Remember this is the league that produced a bid thieving Georgia team not too long ago and nearly had Mississippi St. steal a bid a couple of seasons ago, falling in the final.

Big Ten – March 8-11

Protected Seeds Rooting For: Ohio St. The Buckeyes have been asleep at the wheel the last few weeks and have hurt their seeding. That said, nobody wants to play them so the higher seeds would prefer them be seeded higher in the bracket.

Bubble Teams Rooting For: An early Northwestern defeat. That happens, strike one team from the list.

Pac-12 – March 7-10

Protected Seeds Rooting For: Cal, Washington or Arizona. The rest of the league would be seeded in the 13-15 range and protected seeds really don't want a power conference team in the first round, even a bad one.

Bubble Teams Rooting For: Total chaos. Total chaos means we get a Pac-12 Tourney like a few years ago when only one of the top four seeds wins its first game. We get that this season and it could mean one-bid for this league.

Multi-bid leagues

Mountain West – March 8-10

Protected Seeds Rooting For: A Bid-Thief. The rest are threats to steal a protected seed still.

Bubble Teams Rooting For: UNLV to protect its home court. This should be self-explanatory. Also, an early Colorado St. loss wouldn't hurt.

Atlantic-10 – March 6-11

Protected Seeds Rooting For: An early Temple defeat. Temple is on pace for a protected top four seed as of now. Teams like Vandy, Florida and the Mountain West teams that want that top four seed want a Temple loss.

Bubble Teams Rooting for: A Temple sweep and mayhem other than that. This league is a mess. Someone other than Temple is going to get in, but nobody knows who. For that matter, if everything breaks right here lots of other somebodies could get in and no bubble team outside of this league wants that.

Missouri Valley – March 1-4

Protected Seeds Rooting For: Wichita St. vs Creighton 3 in the final. This would keep the Missouri Valley far, far away in the first round of the tournament. A bid thief would not.

Bubble Teams Rooting For: Ditto. There are two locks in this league and everyone else is a potential bid thief.

WCC – Feb 29-March 5

Protected Seeds Rooting For: They don't really care. Everyone from this league is likely to be seeded in an area where protected seeds will see them in round two if they are still around.

Bubble Teams Rooting For: Gonzaga vs St. Mary's 3. Once again, there are two locks. There is also a bubble team though, so an early loss for BYU wouldn't hurt.

Conference USA – March 7-10

Protected Seeds Rooting For: A Bid Thief (non-bubble). A thief would likely be around a 13 or 14 and be easy pickings for some 3 or 4 seed.

Bubble Teams Rooting For: A Bid Thief (non-bubble). A bid thief would also mean bad losses for the bubble teams in this league.

Everybody else should be fairly self explanatory.

The top teams want the worst team humanly possible to win the conference tournaments while the bubble teams want the best teams to win to remove them from the at-large pool.