Running 2011-12 College Basketball thread

The NCAA recognizes the tourney winners as conference champs. That's the whole point of conference tournaments. In theory, though of course not really, Kansas could be left out of the field. Missouri cannot be.
I think it'd be a lot more exciting if they went back to the old 60s rule and if you have have a conference tourney, the winner is the
ONLY bid your conference gets.

 

In fairness, you can't stop Rob Wilson. You can only hope to contain him.

 

My first time at Madison square garden for today's game. Boy did I pick a winner. My favorite part so far is when the cincinnati guard beats his man off the dribble then acts like he has no clue what to do next.

 

Nice work, but I can't even tell you what years KU has won the conference tourney. I'd look at the rafters in Allen Fieldhouse, but they don't hang banners for that.

 

I hear we have a few Ohio alumni on this board ...

 

Not exactly. The conferences each get an automatic bid and are free to give it to either the regular season champ or the tournament winner. Almost all choose to give it to the tourney winner because if you are a major conference it allows an opportunity to get an extra team in and if you are a lower level D-I league it gets you on TV.

Some conferences, such as the Big 8, didn't even have a postseason tournament until the late 70s because they wanted to make sure the best team got in. These days, if you are a major conference the league tournament title is next to meaningless unless you weren't getting into the tournament without winning it.

 

Every conference tournament winner has an automatic bid. You're right that leagues could theoretically choose to make the conference tournament meaningless, but none do. Only the Ivy League's regular-season champion is guaranteed a bid.

 

Right, it's obvious why they give the bid to the tournament winner. But when the Big 12 puts out a media guide next year it will list the champion as Kansas and the tournament champion as Missouri.

 

As a Phillies fan, I'm pretty excited about seeing that 2010 banner flying.
I'm sure the Green Bay Packers are looking forward to celebrating that regular-season NFL title next year.
And maybe I missed the Bulls big ceremony highlighting last season's regular-season title.
That Presidents Trophy that Vancouver won? Don't recall folks being that enthused, actually.

 

One way college sports are different than the pros is that the regular season conference race means something to the fans even if their team doesn't wind up winning a national championship.

If the Phillies earned a spot in the MLB playoffs and a division pennant in the regular season, then played in an NL East tourney that didn't have any bearing on whether they made the MLB playoffs, how much would that mean to you?

 

Maybe I'm just an odd bird, but conference tournaments DO mean something to me. Maybe it's because the only schools I've given a damn about weren't in the national title picture every year.