the shrewdness of apes

since the first tickets to the Big Dance get handed out tomorrow, i'll first do a quick run-through of all the 1-bid conferences and my picks to win each. i've actually managed to find my way into a pool that is picking every game of every conference tournament, plus the NIT, plus the NCAAs. total overload, but i love having a rooting interest in the Ohio Valley and all these other piddling conferences.

quick update: Appalachian State loses to College of Charleston in OT, meaning that the SoCon is probably down to one bid now too. too bad because i thought the Mountaineers had a chance at an at-large bid with wins over Virginia, Vanderbilt and VCU. as an aside, i've found recently that everytime i see or hear College of Charleston, i start singing it to myself like the "City of Compton" part of Straight Outta Compton (do not under any circumstances subject yourself to the video of the Nina Gordon cover version).

America East: Vermont
Atlantic Sun: Belmont
Big Sky: Weber State; Those who know me, know that i harbor a soft spot for the Utah teams after having lived there for 4 years early in life. I used to ride my bike to the Weber State campus in fact. Plus they have my undying love ever since they upset UNC in the first round of the 1999 NCAA tournament behind Harold "The Show" Arceneaux (now playing with the Utah Eagles of the CBA). I had even picked them in my bracket pool that year and ended up winning the pot by 1 point when UConn beat Duke. in 1998, I picked Utah to win it all and would have won the pot had they managed to knock off Kentucky in the finals.
Big West: Long Beach St.
Conference USA: Memphis; How bad is this league? 2nd place: Central Florida.
Ivy: Penn
MAAC: Loyola; I've gotta be loyal (yeesh) to my brother's alma mater, even though he could give a shit about basketball. The other choice would be Marist since they won the regular season title and because the wife and I shared a plane with them on the way to Ohio back in November. They lost their game to the Bobcats, but had a pretty nice season after that, including a win over likely at-largers ODU.
MAC: Akron
MEAC: Delaware St.
Mid-Continent: Oakland
Northeast: Central Connecticut St.
Ohio Valley: Tennessee Tech
Patriot: Holy Cross
Southern: Davidson
Southland: Texas A&M Corpus Christi
Sun Belt: South Alabama
SWAC: Arkansas Pine Bluff; Random pick for the league that usually gets the play-in game.
West Coast: Gonzaga; They're becoming the Atlanta Braves of college basketball - a great story at first but then kinda boring, and finally just get off the stage already. We've seen it. But you can't pick against them until they lose, just like the Braves kept winning for like 5 more years after everyone thought the Mets or Phillies would finally take them down. If they lose in the WCC tournmament this year, however, they're could be looking at the NIT, though they do have wins over UNC and Texas (pre-Heytvelt suspension; isn't Heytvelt a Dutch name? Shouldn't there be some leniency there if that's the case?).

That's actually 17 18 conferences, so I will have to update my numbers at the bottom of the page.

Colonial Athletic Association
There's been a lot of attention lavished in this conference this year, relative to the past due to George Mason's tripping the light fantastic in 2006. But I'm fresh out of Mason jokes at this point, and they were thoroughly average this year.
The Punching Bags: Delaware, UNC-Wilmington, JMU, Georgia St.
Delaware was a truly terrible team; they gave Iona one of their 2 wins of the season. UNC-Wilmington has fallen from a #9 seed in last year's NCAA tournament to a team capable of losing to Campbell not to mention Delaware and Georgia St. (twice). My poor alma mater of JMU can at least take solace in the performance of the women's team (25-4 and occasionally ranked in the top 25). Georgia St. can just ended William & Mary's season earlier today, so they got that going for them. Like JMU, Georgia St. was coached by Lefty Driesell, who, according to this terribly outdated webpage, can be hired as a speaker at your event for somewhere between $10,001 and $20,000.
Hoping to Make the CAA Final Four: William & Mary, Towson, Northeastern, George Mason
Mason finished behind Northeastern in the standings after losing to the Huskies by 23 to end the regular season. They at least managed to beat JMU tonight. As mentioned, W&M done bowed out already, but there was a shining moment in January when they had a bit of buzz about them after winning 7 in a row over such luminaries and North Florida, UMBC and Hampton before dropping 7 of their next 9. They're hanging around the bottom of the Bog Poll, though. Northeastern played whipping boy to the Big East early on with losses to Syracuse, Pitt, UConn and Lousiville but finished strong (sic) to end up at 12-18. They get Drexel tomorrow. Towson was the ultimate one-man team as Gary Neal lead them with over 25 points a game, and somehow was also 2nd in assists. He'll probably be gunning for some team in Europe next year.
Soon To Be Sick of Answering George Mason Questions:Drexel, Hofstra, ODU, VCU
Hofstra has the weakest claim to an at-large bid of the group, though they beat VCU in their only meeting. VCU won the conference regular season, but has no big wins out of conference and missed their big chance by losing to Bradley two weeks ago. ODU and Drexel have at-large profile. The Monarchs have a win over Georgetown and have won 11 in a row including over all three of their compatriots. Bruiser Flint's boys have 13 road wins, including at Villanova, Syracuse, St. Joseph's and Vermont (check out Bruiser's website that brags about taking "Mid American Conference runner-up Buffalo to overtime on its home court in the opening round of the NIT" and lets us in on the secret that "there is such a fine line between winning and losing."

I think Drexel and ODU can both get in at-large, and they might carry VCU with them since the Rams were the regular season winner, provided they don't lose to Georgia St. tomorrow. What would we be without wishful thinking?

TSOA's picks thus far:
ACC: UNC, Va. Tech, Virginia, Maryland, Duke, BC, Ga. Tech
A10: Xavier
Big South: Winthrop, High Point, VMI?
Big East: Georgetown, Pitt, Marquette, Syracuse, Louisville, Notre Dame, Villanova
Big Ten: Ohio St., Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan St., Purdue
CAA: Drexel, ODU, VCU
Spots awarded: 43 out of 65 (including 18 conferences that will only get 1 bid)