NCAA Conference Tournaments: Mixed Emotions I hate them. One-bid conferences frequently leave their best teams [read: "regular season champs"] home because they get beat in the conference tournament and don't qualify for an at-large bid. In principal, they are simply wrong -- a team should be rewarded for their play throughout the conference schedule, not for getting hot or lucky and winning the conference tournament. Only the Ivy League does it right. But. I love them. So much cheap drama. So much emotion. So much intrigue. They can be as entertaining as the NCAA tournament itself. I make a point to watch all the crap-conference tourney games I can, because they are FUN. But. I hate them. See above. Your thoughts?
Gonzaga and Utah State had better win theirs this year. The tournaments make for a great two weeks leading up to the NCAA's. That's about all I have for now.
I love em and hate em. I love them because they help a team that has gotten on a late run, finally come together as a team, or recovered from missing players, get to the tournament/raise their seed. I hate it, specially for the little confrences, because many have one 1, or maybe 2, teams that go. Half the time, the deserving team gets beat in the confrence tourny and thusly gets knocked out of the NCAAs and winds up in the NIT.
As an avid attendee of the SEC and ACC tournaments (I go to one or the other every year), I love conference tournaments, for the most part. There is a definite vibe at both the SEC and ACC tournaments that is often missing from the NCAA subregionals and regionals. Eight games in two days at the SEC tournament is unbelievable action. As for the smaller conferences, I enjoy the drama of it all, and the fact that just about every team is truly eligible for the NCAAs. But, as others have pointed out, the smaller conferences often leave their best teams at home because of it. But those are the breaks, and the trade-off for getting on TV. The interesting thing is that most of these smaller conferences actually lose money on their tournaments, from what I understand. I wouldn't be shocked to see a tournament or two disappear at some point.
I personally would like to see regular-season champions in the tournament. If the smaller conferences do want a TV game on ESPN or CSTV or FSN, then they should only have their one- and two- teams in a single-game final. The Horizon League started a new format where the top two teams are seeded directly into the semi-finals, and all other teams play-off to get two more semi-final squads. A decent way to go about this, even if it does add an extra game to many teams. Another dislike I have about the tournaments is that they are sometimes played at neutral sites. A fan pays money to watch regular season games at their home gym, but the real games are played at some far-away place. Watch the crowds at some of these small-conference tournaments: NO ONE is at the games. Not many fans make this trip.