It’s the Monday after the first two rounds, so that means it’s time for conference report cards!  With only eleven of the 32 BCS conference teams remaining, we have a feeling that the major conferences aren’t going to perform so well in this year’s grading.  But you never know.  It all depends on the individual matchups and our mood as we break out the red marker.  We review the conferences with multiple bids below…

WCC (2 bids, 1 remaining, 3-1 record, expected PASE = 1.4 wins)

Obviously, any time a WCC team makes the Sweet Sixteen it’s a great year for the conference.  It’s especially great this time around because #10 St. Mary’s shows that the conference has some talent and depth in its league beyond the same old Zags.  With two relatively low seeds (Gonzaga was a #8), many people were expecting the league to go oh-fer in the Dance this year, but now one week later the Gaels are a popular darkhorse pick to come out of the South Region as a true F4 Cinderella.

Verdict: A.  The only thing that would have made this an A+ would have been if Gonzaga had upset #1 Syracuse.  Every additional win from here on out is just gravy.

Big 10 (5 bids, 3 remaining, 7-2 record, expected PASE = 7.1 wins)

The Big Ten is having a good tournament after a somewhat disappointing regular season, and every year the league does this everyone acts surprised.  #2 Ohio State rolled in its two games and appears a very strong contender to get to the Final Four after Northern Iowa blew up the Midwest Region.  #4 Purdue and #5 Michigan State both survived extremely close games that support the contention that the Big Ten style of play (gutting out close games) helps when it comes Tourney time.  OSU and MSU are on a likely collision course to the regional finals for an all-Big Ten extravaganza, but even if nobody wins another game, the league has already reached this year’s expectations.

Verdict: A-.  Minnesota wasn’t expected to do much and they didn’t, but #4 Wisconsin was upset by a vastly underrated #12 Cornell in the second round.  That upset is more than compensated by Purdue’s showing against #5 Texas A&M, a game where it was clear just how much they missed Robbie Hummel yet they still found a way to win.  OSU and MSU give the Big Ten the most Sweet Sixteen teams of any league this season.

Pac-10 (2 bids, 1 remaining, 3-1 record, expected PASE = 1.2 wins)

West coast bias reared its head as the two Pac-10 invitees won first round games over Big East squads to move into the next round.  #11 Washington then followed that up with a pasting of #3 New Mexico, while #8 Cal was simply outclassed by Duke’s talent.  The way Washington is playing right now (nine in a row), we wouldn’t automatically assume a loss to WVU in the Sweets, but regardless of that result the league has already far outperformed what most people expected this year (which was an 0-2 record).

Verdict: B+.  The league was undoubtedly way, way down this year, but UW and Cal gave it back a wee bit of respectability with their showings over the weekend.

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As we move through the next few days when automatic bids will be handed out on a regular basis, we’re going to break down the teams for you so that you can start thinking about your bracket ahead of time.  The pearls of wisdom are meant to help you better understand what these teams are good at and how to make fair comparisons between them — all too often, the capsules you see have a lot of information in them, but very little of it is actually helpful.  If you have additional ideas, leave them in the comments.  For the good/bad matchups, we’re not necessarily saying that Team X will win; we’re simply pointing out that in an ideal situation, some of that team’s strengths will be more likely to manifest against those particular opponents — so save the emails.  We’re still catching up, but these should be the teams through the early part of the week.

#5. Northern Iowa Panthers (28-4, 15-3 MVC) – automatic qualifier

NCAA Seed Range: #7-#9

Three Bruce Pearls of Wisdom:

1. It’s all about methodical offense and sticky defense for the Panthers.  This team will not beat themselves with mistakes, so you’d better be disciplined in your approach if you hope to beat them.  Sixty points is the magic number — the Panthers were 16-0 this year when reaching that score.  Possession basketball is the key; a 10-point deficit in the last five minutes against UNI is nearly impossible to recover from, as they take care of the ball (only 10.5 turnovers/game) and hit free throws (75.5%).
2. Not many mid-majors have a legitimate seven-footer but UNI’s Jordan Eglseder is one such player.  He only plays about 22 minutes per game, but he’s an effective scorer in the low post, draws a lot of fouls and is one of the best per-minute rebounders in the nation on both ends.  He’s not a game-changer in the sense that he will own the paint, but he is a tough wrinkle to prepare for in the game plan.
3. The Panthers beat up on some bad major conference teams this year (Iowa, Iowa State, BC) in addition to knocking off some mid-major powers in Old Dominion and Siena.  The one confounding loss was to DePaul in the Virgin Islands early in the year where Mac Koshwal (12/19) dominated Eglseder (2/6) inside.  Don’t assume that as a trend, though, as Eglseder played well against ISU’s Craig Brackins (20/14) and Purdue’s JaJuan Johnson last season (13/5).

Good Matchups:  Wake Forest, Clemson

Bad Matchups: Marquette, UNLV

#6. Old Dominion (26-8, 15-3 CAA) – automatic qualifier

NCAA Seed Range: #9-#11

Three Bruce Pearls of Wisdom:

1. There’s no one player you have to stop to beat ODU, but if you can slow down 6’10 center Gerald Lee, you’ll have a better chance.  The versatile big man was seen in the CAA Tournament taking the ball upcourt against pressure on occasion, in addition to lending his usual 15/5 and 54% shooting from the field.  He has six teammates who contribute between six and nine points per game, so keying on any one of them is precarious because the Monarchs share the wealth.  They only had six occasions where a player scored 20+ points in a game this year, and five of those were Lee (Marsharee Neely was the other).
2. ODU is another one of those mid-majors that thrives on possession basketball.  They limit your possessions by defending and rebounding among the best in the nation.  They also gang-rebound on the offensive glass, giving themselves an extra chance on nearly half of their scoring opportunities.  Those extra chances help to make up for what is a fairly lousy three-point (31.5%) and two-point shooting percentage (49.4%).
3. ODU’s signature win was at Georgetown during Snowpacalypse I in December.  They did it by forcing GU point guard Chris Wright into a difficult game (2-8 FG; 4 pts) and collecting eighteen Hoya turnovers.  It should be noted that if you can turn over the Monarchs, as Missouri, Northern Iowa and Dayton successfully did in the nonconference slate, they struggle scoring enough points to win.

Good Matchups:  Oklahoma State, Texas

Bad Matchups: Clemson, Richmond

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Wild Saturday.  Obviously, there’s a million things to talk about this weekend, but this special ATB Saturday edition will focus exclusively on the thirteen conference tournaments that were going on across the country today.  In our usual weekend edition on Sunday night, we’ll discuss all the other games from the bigger conferences who are still finishing up regular season action, including the upsets of #1 Syracuse, #5 Kansas State and so forth.  Bear with us, as we’ll be back tomorrow.

Conference Tourneys.  The ‘expanded’ NCAA Tourney continued today with another 35 teams eliminated on this glorious Saturday of hoops across the nation.

Murray Wins 30 Games For the First Time in OVC History (M. Dann)

• Ohio Valley.  Murray State pulled away late from the #2 seed, Morehead State, to win its eighth conference championship in the last sixteen years.  The Racers also reached the 30-win mark for the first time in school and OVC history en route to its fourteenth NCAA Tournament bid.  In an ugly, defensive-oriented game, it was Isaiah Canaan who came off the bench for the Racers to provide offensive punch (16/5), but it was his block on a breakaway dunk attempt (called a foul) that electrified the crowd and made the ESPN top 10 plays tonight.  Murray will be a nightmare of a matchup for the team that draws them in the first round of the NCAAs this year.
• Big South.  #3 Winthrop pulled off the upset at top seed Coastal Carolina in their building tonight, winning 64-53 behind a strong second half and a suffocating defense that held CCU’s best player, Joseph Harris, to a mere three points on 1-6 shooting.  This is Winthrop’s fifth Big South title in the last six years, an amazing feat considering that the original architect of the program, Gregg Marshall has since moved on to Wichita State (playing for its own bid tomorrow).  The Eagles are probably looking at a #16 seed this year.
• Atlantic Sun.  East Tennessee State won its second consecutive A-Sun Tournament tonight, this time as a #5 seed.  The Bucs’ pressure defense forced sixteen Mercer turnovers and held their two stars, James Florence and Danny Emerson, to nearly half their typical offensive output.  Justin Tubbs had 18/3 for the winning team, This clearly isn’t a vintage ETSU team, but Murray Bartow has them back in the Dance for the third time in his career there, where they’re likely looking at a #16 seed again.
• Missouri Valley.  At Arch Madness, the top two seeds advanced today with #1 Northern Iowa shutting down everything #5 Bradley tried to do on offense today, and #2 Wichita State surviving a close one against Illinois State.  Of course, UNI is already secure in an NCAA Tournament bid, but they’re attempting to win back-to-back MVC titles, while Wichita will not be invited unless they earn the auto-bid tomorrow.  The two teams split home-and-home this year, and you’d have to believe that the Shockers will bring everything they’ve got tomorrow afternoon.  RTC Live will be there covering the game.

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Top seed Northern Iowa had little problem with Drake on Friday, but figure to face a stiffer test Saturday when they take on the Bradley Braves. Bradley dominated fourth seeded Creighton 81-62 on Friday. Next up, they’ll look to repeat their performance from February 13, when they defeated UNI 68-59. The key to the Braves’ upset that night was beating UNI on the glass (they outrebounded them by 5) and avoiding turnovers. If they can do those two things again, it’s possible the Braves can pull the upset and put a serious dent in UNI’s NCAA Tournament seeding. The consensus among media in St. Louis is that UNI is going to get an at-large bid regardless of their finish in the tourney this weekend, but a favorable seed is very much on the line.  Join us at 2:30 ET for the action on RTC Live!

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Big Red Freshness Lasts Right Through It. Cornell 95, Brown 76.  It probably took a little longer than the nervous Big Red faithful hoped to put away the pesky Brown Bears tonight, but in the end, it was simply a formality because Cornell players were so narrowly focused on winning their third straight Ivy League title and NCAA bid that there was no way they were going to lose this game tonight.  How focused were they?  Try a season-best 57% shooting and an utterly ridonkulous 20-30 from deep tonight.  At one point during the conflagration of shot-making by the Big Red, they hit eight treys in a row en route to an 11-13 first half.  But it was the second half where Cornell exhibited its dominance, using a 14-4 run early to take control of the game and ensure another title coming to Ithaca this season.  All five starters reached double figures, but it was lesser-known forward Jon Jaques who took the scoring honors with 20/7 tonight (including six threes).  In all, four players had four or more threes, which we figure has to be some kind of a record for versatile and voluminous shooting!  Cornell will now wait to see where their NCAA seed lies, but the smart money is on a #12 seed when the brackets are released.  Anyone up for a #12/#5 upset this year?

Will 3d Time Be the Charm For Cornell? (Ithaca Journal/G. Ertl)

RTC Live.

• Wichita State 73, Missouri State 63.  On Quarterfinal Friday in St. Louis, top seed Northern Iowa defeated Drake, Bradley upset Creighton and Illinois State won the nightcap. And in the game you followed here on RTC Live, Wichita State held off Missouri State, 73-63. A close, hard-fought and well-played game, the Shockers were paced by Garrett Stutz, whose play in the paint helped them overcome hot outside shooting of the Bears. Stutz finished with 19 points and 6 rebounds, and converted on back-to-back possessions during a key stretch of the second half to help them pull away. The Shockers advance to play the Redbirds of Illinois State tomorrow afternoon here in St. Louis.

Conference Tourneys.  Eight conference tourneys tonight, and a ridiculous thirteen tomorrow.  Let’s see what was interesting…

• Ohio Valley.  The top two teams — Murray State and Morehead State — both advanced tonight to the finals on Saturday.  Murray has put together a phenomenal 29-win season, so it’d be a shame to see them miss out on the NCAAs, but Morehead is the only OVC team to have beaten the Racers this year.  It was Morehead tonight, though, not Murray, who had the comfortable win in the semis.  Should be a great one on Saturday for the auto-bid.
• Atlantic Sun.  #6 seed Mercer continues to use its home court advantage to knock off higher-seeded teams with tonight’s victory over #2 Jacksonville.  #5 East Tennessee State was able to get by #8 Kennesaw State whom had knocked off top seed Belmont last night.  So it’ll be Mercer vs. ETSU for the automatic bid.  The Bucs will be playing in their third A-Sun title game in four years, and will be looking to win back-t0-back NCAA bids despite having not finished first in the regular season in either of the last two years.
• Horizon.  In the Horizon second round tonight, #7 Detroit continues to turn heads with another upset win behind Eli Holman’s dub-dub (16/11), while #4 Milwaukee earned the pleasure of facing #1 Butler in the semifinals on Saturday by defeating #5 Cleveland State.  The Titans will play #2 Wright State in the other semifinal — neither of the top two seeds have played yet in this tournament, while Detroit has already played two games and Milwaukee one.

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Patrick Marshall of White & Blue Review is the RTC correspondent for the Missouri Valley Conference.

PRESEASON vs. ACTUAL RESULTS

As you can see from the preseason predictions I made on the Missouri Valley conference back in October versus how things ended up, the MVC turned out to be difficult to predict this year as none of the teams performed as expected other than Northern Iowa and Wichita State.

I originally was not sold on the Panthers, but as the season wore on, I could see the cohesiveness and all the little things this group of players do to win games.  Even with the suspension of Jordan Eglseder in three of the final four games, they were able to rally for the most part and continue their dominance in the Valley.  Wichita State may have surprised some, but the Shockers appear to be back in the Valley picture after a few year absence from relevance.  The work Gregg Marshall has done to build this team back up from scratch has paid off.  The question now is whether it is enough to get to an NCAA Tournament postseason.

HELLO SAINT LOUIS

The Missouri Valley Conference tournament will take place this coming week at the Scottrade Center in downtown Saint Louis.  Rush the Court will be live in St. Louis this week to keep you updated on the things going on at Arch Madness.  Here is how the bracket shapes up:

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#903. Philadelphia 76, Goldey-Beacom 65.  It’s not D1, but we don’t really care.  Anyone who wins 903 games deserves all the accolades he can get, and RTC is happy to oblige (especially when their fans oblige us with a well-deserved RTC).  With local coaching luminaries such as Villanova’s Jay Wright and Temple’s Fran Dunphy in attendance, the 68-year old coach Herb Magee thrilled an SRO crowd by avenging the school’s only CACC conference loss as he officially became the all-time leader in NCAA wins, passing Bob Knight’s 902.  His Rams move to 23-6 overall and 15-1 in the conference as they look to make another run in the Division II Tournament next month.  Magee won a national title at the school in 1970 and has averaged over twenty victories a year ever since, yet he says he has no plans to slow down as long as he’s healthy, inviting everyone back in “four and a half years” for the next celebration at 1,000.  After the game fans were given t-shirts with Magee’s name and the number 903 on the front — if anyone can send us one of these, we’d be exceptionally grateful.  Congratulations, Coach Magee — a class act, through and through.

Fans RTC After Magee Won his 903d Game Tonight (Phila. Inquirer)

The Wild and Wonderful Big East.  #13 Georgetown 70, Louisville 60.  As soon as you think you have this league figured out, it surprises you again.  Come on, who wasn’t saying at halftime of this game tonight that the Cards were surging and the Hoyas were cooked.  It’s ok, you don’t have to admit it to us, but that’s what we were thinking too.  Um, we guess the Hoyas weren’t thinking that.  Georgetown used a 24-5 run to start the second half and silence the Freedom Hall crowd behind Austin Freeman’s 29/4/4 assts, the vast majority of which came in that half.  The rest of the game was academic, as Rick Pitino’s team fell back into its old habit of Edgar Sosa (24/8 assts) and Samardo Samuels (11/6) doing most of the shooting (and scoring).  Both of these teams are now 9-6 and one game behind West Virginia for magical double-bye that the Big East Tournament offers its top four seeds.  Georgetown has two winnable home games vs. Notre Dame and Cincy sandwiching a tough road game at WVU, while Louisville has three pretty tough games remaining (UConn and Marquette away, Syracuse at home).  As for the long-term viability of these two teams, both have warts, but Georgetown’s better offensive balance and big-game ability carries a lot more weight with us — if having to choose now, Louisville looks like a first-round upset waiting to happen, while the Hoyas are a Sweet Sixteen team so long as their starters stay on the floor.

Upset of the Night.  Evansville 55, #24 Northern Iowa 54.  How badly must suspended UNI center Jordan Eglseder feel now?  Although the Panthers are still safely within the NCAA field even if they lose in Arch Madness next week, this loss to the hapless Evansville Purple Aces will have a serious impact on their seeding two Sundays from now.  Evansville, who has won only two games in the MVC all season but beat the top two teams (UNI and Wichita State) on their home court, held Nothern Iowa to 33% shooting and only 5-27 from three, one of their three worst performances of the season.  The few Evansville fans who were there actually RTC’d, but we haven’t yet found any photographic or video evidence of this yet.

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Ryan Restivo is the RTC correspondent for the CAA and an occasional contributor. 

I don’t think this is a news flash but the BracketBusters format is broken. The teams that really could have benefitted from BracketBuster games such as Cornell and St. Mary’s chose not to participate.  Both of those schools could have used another chance to prove their strength against the at-large field in an effort to bolster their resume for March Madness.  Until the tournament expands to 96 or 100 or 347 teams, there were only two headline games in BracketBusters this year and both were a resounding dud. Northern Iowa blew out Old Dominion and Siena could not hang with ranked Butler in Hinkle Fieldhouse. However, if you are a fan of mid-major college basketball, you probably got to see teams that will be showcased in this year’s NIT or other postseason events.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the winners and losers of this past weekend’s BracketBusters.

Winner: Missouri Valley Conference. The Valley quietly went 7-3 in the event starting with a Northern Iowa crushing of Old Dominion at home on Friday night. There’s a good chance that Northern Iowa clinched an at-large berth should they fall in their conference tournament and the Valley could benefit from the lack of major conference at-large bids by bringing in two. It will likely not match the four it put in 2006 but the winner of this conference will be a dark horse for an upset come mid-March.

Loser: Siena. The Saints had the lead at halftime against Butler but could not find the basket in the second half, eventually falling by 17 at Hinkle Fieldhouse. Siena lost every game against top-50 RPI opponents this year, and unless Siena wins the MAAC Tournament, the Saints are off the bubble.

Winner: Utah State. The Aggies are going to be on the fence for an at-large bid only because of their weak non-conference schedule. But their tournament resume got a little stronger Saturday with a 10-point win over visiting Wichita State. Utah State’s claim to fame this year is a 10-point home win over BYU. One statistical reason the Aggies should be in? They are the nation’s best (43%) from behind the arc and are fifth in the nation in free throw percentage at 77%. The only problem they have, other than a weak schedule, is that five of the six Aggie losses have been on the road so it will be interesting to see how they handle a road-neutral environment.

Loser: Colonial Athletic Association. The CAA went 3-9 in BracketBusters and blew two games in almost the same way over this weekend. George Mason’s Ryan Pearson drove too hard to the hole and got called for charging late with a chance to tie the game against Charleston, and GMU lost by two. Northeastern’s Matt Janning got called on a similar charge with a chance to take the lead in their game against Louisiana Tech and also lost by two. This was a weekend where if the CAA could grab a few of their five TV games it would have given the conference a great chance at getting multiple bids for the first time since in several year. However, the CAA managed to win only one of their TV games and the non-TV games weren’t any better. Every CAA team that went on the road lost, and lost by an average of 11.5 points. Unfortunately, it looks like the CAA will be a one-bid conference again this year

Ryan Restivo of the MAAC-based SienaSaintsBlog is the RTC correspondent for the Colonial Athletic Association. SienaSaintsBlog now features exclusive video! When not covering the CAA for Rush The Court, Ryan writes about Fantasy Baseball on Rotosavants.com, on his own website RyanRestivo.com and at SienaSaintsBlog.com.  Ryan will take your questions here.

Grab a cup of coffee or a red bull, because we’ve got a great one for the nightcap of an RTC Live quadruple-header when Wichita State visits Utah State to end ESPN’s Bracketbuster weekend. The Shockers come into Logan on a bit of a slide, going just 1-4 in their last five road games (including a terrible loss at previously MVC-winless Evansville) but could get back into the bubble discussion with a win here. Wichita State will look to get it done with their fantastic defense (30th in the nation in points per possession at just .914) and a balanced offense led by guards Toure Murry and Clevin Hannah (averaging 12.4 and 12.3 points per game, respectively). Utah State comes into the game red-hot, winning their last 11 games and will counter the Shockers’ defense with the nation’s fifth most efficient offense, including the eleventh best FG% (48.6%) and nation’s best 3-point shooting (42.4%). Tai Wesley gets it done for the Aggies underneath leading the Aggies with 13.3 points per game and they will look to Pooh Williams, the WAC’s best perimeter defender, to slow down the Shocker guards. A win for the Aggies would add another much-needed quality win to the resume should they falter at the WAC Tournament in Reno next month. The loser of this game will likely have its odds of making it into the bracket as an at-large candidate busted. Can Wichita State turn it around? Or will Utah State continue its recent dominance? Make sure you have enough caffeine in you to stay up with us on RTC Live tonight and find out.

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