What a phenomenal Saturday of college basketball. The focus of the world was on the dramatics of games in Chapel Hill, Louisville, Norman and Bloomington, among others, but the Circle of March was instead tuned into the eight conference tournaments that were under way and the number of other leagues that eliminated schools from our eligibility list by virtue of the season ending. As a result, a whopping 39 schools dropped off of the CoM in the last 24 hours, leaving us with a total of 237 eligibles heading into the heart of Championship Fortnight. By this point next week, we’ll be down to around 80 or so. Congratulations are due to Belmont, the first automatic qualifier of the year as the OVC champion; the second qualifier from the Missouri Valley will solve for its representative later today at Arch Madness.

 Eliminations (03.07.15)

• Arkansas State
• Brown
• Bryant
• Cal State Fullerton
• Canisius
• Chattanooga
• Cleveland State
• College of Charleston
• Columbia
• Cornell
• Dartmouth
• Delaware
• Denver
• East Tennessee State
• Elon
• Florida Atlantic
• Gardner-Webb
• Idaho State
• Illinois-Chicago
• James Madison
• Longwood
• Loyola (Chicago)
• Marist
• Montana State
• North Dakota
• Pennsylvania
• Princeton
• Rider
• Saint Mary’s
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• Santa Clara
• Siena
• Southern Utah
• Sain Francis (PA)
• Troy
• UNC-Greensboro
• VMI
• Western Illinois

***** – quit your job and divorce your wife if that’s what it takes to watch this game live
**** – best watched live, but if you must, tivo and watch it tonight as soon as you get home
*** – set your tivo but make sure you watch it later
** – set your tivo but we’ll forgive you if it stays in the queue until 2013
* – don’t waste bandwidth (yours or the tivo’s) of any kind on this game

Brian Otskey is an RTC contributor.

What a Saturday it was. The final day of the regular season for BCS teams is today while another ticket will be punched, this time out of the Missouri Valley. All rankings from RTC and all times Eastern.

#22 Kentucky @ Tennessee — 12 pm on CBS (****)

Knight Could ruin UT's Senior Day If He Gets Hot

Tennessee likely locked up a bid Thursday night at South Carolina but a loss today would drop them to 8-8 in the SEC. A win in the conference tournament would be advisable but their solid non-conference resume and strong schedule should probably be enough to push the Volunteers over the top.

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Game #160.  RTC Live is back at the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament with the best game of the day on paper.

Friday’s quarterfinal matchup between Creighton and Northern Iowa features two of the MVC’s heavyweights: the teams have combined to win nine of the previous 12 MVC Tournament titles. Its also a matchup of teams who played just six days ago in the regular season finale, a game Creighton won 63-55. That’s a relatively rare occurrance, though its happened six times to Creighton over the past 12 years. Conventional wisdom might hold that the team winning the first game would struggle in the rematch, but in four of the last five times it’s happened, the team who won the regular season finale also won the MVC Quarterfinal game.  Northern Iowa comes into the game having lost six of seven without their senior leader, Lucas O’Rear, who fractured his ankle in early February, and have been outrebounded in four of their last five games — not surprising, considering O’Rear was their leading rebounder. The Panthers had been averaging ten more three-point attempts a game since losing O’Rear, but in the game with Creighton last week, they proceeded to shoot just 12 of them, the fewest attempts of any game all season. Their game plan was to drive it inside and get to the line, which worked: they got Creighton’s second-team All-MVC point guard Antoine Young in foul trouble early, and without him, the Bluejays struggled offensively. They scored just eight points in the final twelve minutes of the first half with him on the bench; when he returned in the second half, they opened up an 11-0 run to take a lead they didn’t give up.

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