SWAC Update, MAAC and Southern Conference Championship Preview

In addition to being a blog, this update is also being sent via e-mail today for those that have not been keeping up with the blog or with the link to the standings.

Below outlines impacts to the SWAC prior to its start, a preview of the 2 tournament championship games today, attached standings update, and payment.  I have attached the standings in this note, but they are also updated on One Drive.  

Link to the Standings (I reset the standings link as a few people indicated they were having issues with access)


Payment

If you have not yet made arrangements to pay, please do so soon or I will need to remove you from the pool.  Those that I see often I am not worried about, I am more concerned about the people that I really don't see throughout the year.  

Column AX in the spreadsheet shows who has not yet paid, but I know many of you have already made arrangements.  If I have something inaccurate let me know and I will make the update.

SWAC Tournament Update

Although the SWAC tournament has not yet tipped off, we had 6 people lose a point due to Grambling State being disqualified.  No changes can be made to that pick as I did give the opportunity a week ago to everyone to make a change to Grambling State because we knew they were being talked about in terms of potentially being disqualified. 

Many people chose to make a change even though Grambling State was far and away the best team in the SWAC, but for the unlucky 6 that chose not to, the risk did not pay off.  Those kids at Grambling should start going to class more often.

https://www.midmajormadness.com/2018/3/4/17077050/swac-tournament-bracket-grambling-arkansas-pine-bluff-texas-southern-prairie-view-ncaa-basketball

MAAC Tournament Championship Preview

• The MAAC tournament has been upset heavy with the 1,2,3, and 5 seeds all going down early, leaving the championship match-up between (4) Iona and (6) Fairfield
• Iona has had a history of winning this tournament regardless of seed, so we do have 11 people on Iona in our pool, a Iona win will provide a bonus point which will again shake up the standings
• Team Rankings did project Iona as the winner of the conference tournament before it even started, giving them a 27% chance to win, however 38% of our pool went with (1) Rider
• Iona is only favored to win the game by 4 points so this should be a close game, likely another last second shot winner

Southern Conference Tournament Championship Preview

• The Southern Conference will be the 2nd championship game played tonight with (1) UNC Greensboro vs. (2) East Tennessee State, very chalky match-up
• Here is a stat that did not come true, both Team Rankings and our pool gave (3) Furman a 35% chance to win this conference tournament;  Although we were aligned with the analytics, Furman lost
• No bonus points available and we're fairly evenly split between UNC Greensboro and East Tennessee State
• Vegas has East Tennessee State winning this game by 1, which again means a close game is expected

We are now at the point in the basketball season where every game from here on out will be a conference tournament game, losses will rack up super fast this week.  Unless you're getting absolutely clobbered, no reason to panic as the losses rack up as Saturday & Sunday will bring us 19 championship games. 

We have seen in this pool many times where someone is around mid pack in the standings, seems out of it, and jumps right to the top of the standings after Saturday.  This is why on the full version of the standings spreadsheet I show things like Max Points and Your Projected Total, those are indicators on if you are really out of it or not.  Until your Max Points are less than the Total Points of the 1st place person, you have a chance.