We made it to Selection Sunday and this pool is wide open with so many unique selections in today's conference tournament championship games. We're down to our last 5 championship games today and every single game is important to our pool. Although not all can come in 1st place, we do have 20 people that can finish somewhere in the top 4.
Ivy League (11:00 AM CST)
We start off our morning with Ivy League chalk as (1) Princeton plays (2) Yale in a matchup that helps set up the remaining four conference tournaments later today. Heffron, Lundo and Matthew are all on Yale while everyone else is on Princeton, giving the 3 of them the ability to jump up in the standings before more games tip off. Analytics give Princeton a 45% chance to win the conference tournament, but the spread today only favors Princeton by 3.5 points. As always, if I am out of it my stance is to root for chaos, so go Yale!
SEC (12:00 PM CST)
It seems as though these games are lining up perfectly for those that need wins to stay in contention later today. (8) Texas A&M matches up against (2) Tennessee and absolutely nobody picked Texas A&M. Both Tina and Matthew are on Tennessee and a Tennessee win allows them to climb over multiple people in the standings. A Yale and Tennessee win moves Matthew from 17th to 4th place. Tennessee is favored by 6.5 points which should mean an easy win, but Texas A&M is hot right now.
Reminder: This is the conference that is both a final tiebreaker, if needed, as well as awards bonus points for the person who gets the final score correct or closest.
Atlantic 10 (12:00 PM CST)
The Atlantic 10 is important today for only 1 guy, Tim Husted. A Davidson win, along with a Princeton win early in the day, allows him to jump into 3rd place and sets up for an exciting finish with the last two games. This game is (6) Richmond vs. (2) Davidson and don't let the seed numbers throw you off, this will be a close game with Davidson only favored by 3.5 points.
American Athletic Conference (2:15 PM CST)
This is the championship game that can clinch 1st place for Pizzy and 2nd pace for Tom if (1) Houston loses to (3) Memphis. Pizzy and Tom are riding Memphis, while everyone else has Houston. The 2 points for them would clinch everything. Lundo also has Memphis, with a Memphis win and a few other games going in his favor early in the day would put him in contention for the top 4. The lines are very similar today, Houston is favored to win by 3.5 points.
Big 10 (2:30 PM CST)
The entire pool may potentially come down to the B1G, which makes me very happy. (3) Purdue takes on (5) Iowa and we are on both these teams, bonus points will be awarded. If Iowa wins and everything falls in line for Tim today, he can tie Pizzy for 1st place and the SEC score becomes a tiebreaker. Additionally, Curt has Iowa and if things fall in line for him he would be flirting with the top 4. 9 of the top 20 are on Purdue, meaning a Purdue win would put Robb, Whit, Iannuzzi, Sam, Corey or Matthew into a top 4 finish. This potentially becomes a huge game.
The standings are now updated through the Big West Conference Championship game from late last night where (2) CS Fullerton came back and beat (1) Long Beach State, bumping up Whit and Curt to be able to make a run today.
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I likely will not post a final standings update until late tonight, way after the selection show, as I need time to verify that everything is calculating accurately before announcing winners. Not only do we have payouts for the top 4 in this pool, but up and down the standings we have bonus point payouts that I need to ensure are correct.