The regular season has come; the regular season has gone.  What are we supposed to do now?  WE DANCE!!*

It’s tournament time, ladies and gentlemen!  When we talk with you this time next week, we’ll know who’s in and who’s out.  But, before we can get to who’s in and who’s out, we’ve gotta navigate through the remaining mid-major and major conference tournaments. Actually, we can already tell you about 9 teams that have already clinched an automatic bid.  Keep checking back with that link for updates.

As usual, we’ve got a new #1; actually, it’s an old #1.  Fittingly, the team that began the season in the top spot has finished the regular season in the top spot.  It’s very symmetric-feeling.  Anyhow, while UNC is the lone ACC team in the top 5, there are 3 Big East teams taking up space up there – Pitt, UConn, and Louisville.  This Big East-logjam at the top of the national polls will make their conference tourney interesting and cost at least one team, if not two or all three, a shot at a 1-seed.  Oh, and don’t forget about those Memphis Tigers!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our special Sparty & Friends poll graphics as much as we’ve enjoyed putting them together for you.  Here’s the final results and shuffling from the last full week of regular season play:

Big East: Patphish – The best conference tournament begins today and features all 16 teams in a rolling bracket. I liked it better when only 12 teams made it, but it will be interesting to see how it works out. The Pitt Panthers have been to the conference finals 7 of the last 8 years and are the defending champs. After they manhandled the FNCUH twice in the last month, they are the favorites to win it again.

Many conference tourneys have lost their luster over the years, but playing and winning in Madison Square Garden is still very special. It should be noted that no team outside of the original 9, (settle down, I know it was only 7 for a few years at the very beginning), has ever won the title. Sorry Louisville, but that trend will not change this year. Here is how it will go this year:

Tuesday:

• # 9 Cincy over #16 DePaul
• # 12 Georgetown over #13 St. Johns
• # 10 Notre Dame over # 15 Rutgers
• # 11 Seton Hall over # 14 USF

Wednesday:

• # 8 Providence over # 9 Cincy  (winner of this game dances, loser not so much)
• # 12 Georgetown over # 5 Marquette
• # 10 Notre Dame over # 7 West Virginia
• # 6 Syracuse over # 11 Seton Hall

Thursday:

• # 1 Louisville over # 8 Providence (Friars may take this one)
• # 4 Villanova over # 12 Georgetown
• # 2  Pitt over # 10 Notre Dame
• # 3 FNCUH over # 6 Syracuse

Friday:

• # 4 Villanova over # 1 Louisville
• # 3 FNCUH over # 2 Pitt (they will not get the Huskies 3 times in one season, UConn MUST win this game or they will not be a # 1 seed)

Saturday:

The Future National Champion UConn Huskies 74, The Villanova Wildcats 69.

Tournament MOP: A.J. Price, UConn

At the conclusion of the championship game, these teams will be moving on to join the Madness:

1. UConn (# 1 seed)
2. Pitt (1)
3. Louisville (2)
4. Villanova (3)
5. Marquette (6)
6. Syracuse (7)
7. West Virginia (7)
8. Providence  (10)

ACC: GITC – The ACC has a few interesting first round tournament games… three out of four to be exact. BC has to beat Virginia to secure a spot in the tourney. Virginia has been feisty of late but only on their home floor. Look for BC to punch the ticket. Maryland plays NC State in the first round and needs the game as a precursor for a rematch against Wake Forest where an upset would get them into the tournament. For those who cannot recall, Wake beat Maryland in College Park last week by two in a game where Maryland got two free throws on their home floor. Two. I was there. It was bad. The other game is a stay alive game between Virginia Tech and Miami. The winner plays North Carolina and a win there would get that team in and Lunardi says that Carolina wouldn’t even lose their #1 seed. Roy Williams was on PTI yesterday and indicated that he might rest some of his guys in the ACC Tournament because the last two seasons he won the ACC but not the NCAA and Tar Heel fans were upset. He says that proves that his objective should be to have his team in the best shape in a week from now. You can never look past those desperate teams in these situations. Duke, Florida State, Clemson, Wake, and UNC have locked up. BC will lock up with the win. Maryland can do it with a win over Wake and Miami/VaTech can do it with a win over Carolina. They could still get eight in but I’ll say they get seven where either UNC or Wake goes down and BC doesn’t. Oh, and are 75% of the first round Big East Tournament games important? No, because those teams are terrible.

Big 10: Sparty -  Michigan State happens to be the outright champ. Purdue, Illinois, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan are all dancing. Following a devastating loss to Iowa in their regular season finale, Penn State needs to win one game in the conference tournament to make sure they are as well. That would give the Big 10 eight teams going into the tournament. Big 10>Big East>ACC.

Michigan State is winning the Big 10 Tourney this week against someone not named Purdue.

Check back at 1pm to get more Big 10 news from your one and only true source for Big 10 knowledge. One more thing, Michigan State rules.

Big 10 Tournament seedings:
1. Michigan State
2. Illinois
3. Purdue
4. Wisconsin
5. Ohio State
6. Penn State
7. Michigan
8. Minnesota
9. Northwestern
10. Iowa
11. Indiana

Big 12: Miz/Trey – Take a look at the Big 12 conference standings.  Did those guys have wins and losses determined on a bell curve?  It’s crazy how much the final standings mimic an almost perfect bell curve!  Anyway, Kansas wrapped up the conference title over the weekend against Texas after trying to give it away during the week against Texas Tech.  Luckily for the Jayhawks, Oklahoma was dropping one at Mizzou while the Jayhawks were getting run out of the gym by the Red Raiders so they kept their 1-game lead in the conference standings.  Oklahoma will possibly have a shot at revenge against Mizzou as early as Friday…provided neither team is upset on Thursday.

On a side note, why is the “12″ in “Big 12″ in numerical form and not spelled-out similarly to the “Ten” in “Big Ten”?  This makes no sense to me, but I have two hypotheses.  The first is that the Big 12 is pretentious and wants to be first in alphabetical order and “Twelve” would be after “Ten” but “12″ preceeds “Ten.”  Second, the Big Ten is trying to throw us off from the fact that they can’t actually count the number of teams in the conference.  Maybe by spelling out “Ten,” they think we won’t notice that there’s actually more teams.  I may digress, but I’m no fool.

 PAC 10: thecassino – A couple weeks ago I said that Craig Robinson would be the Pac-10 coach of the year. I was wrong. The coaches decided that Lorenzo Romar, in taking a team predicted to finish 5^th in the conference to an outright conference title, was more deserving of the award. And who am I to argue with them? UW beat rival WSU to clinch and though the Cougars played hard, but there is something wrong when Nikola Koprivica is taking crunch time shots (or really, playing at all). The Huskies are playing great basketball right now, and maybe I’m just looking through purple tinted glasses, but I don’t really see a weakness in this team come tournament time. Taller guards might give them problems, but unless they stop being a great rebounding team and quit playing frustrating perimeter defense they’re going to be a tough out.

Arizona State managed to drop a home game to Stanford which had me thinking that due to their lack of depth and absence of any legitimate scorers behind Harden and Pendergraph they were done. Their legs looked dead and nobody could put the pumpkin in the basket aside from Harden. They looked awful. Then they turned around and scored a bunch (83 for a team that plays at a snail’s pace) while making one of the best shooting teams in the nation in Cal look pretty pedestrian, so they’re all over the place. But in that game just three bench players played, and one played two minutes and another played only one. A deep run in the Pac-10 tournament could be a disaster for this team’s legs.
Arizona is in pretty much the same shape as last week after losing to Cal and beating Stanford. A win in their conference tournament game against Arizona State puts them in the field of 64. A loss and they better hope there are as few auto bids given out as possible. Although, I still think that wins over Kansas and Gonzaga are going to look real good to the committee.

USC is still out despite rallying to finish 6th in the conference. It’s not just that they didn’t beat anybody outside of conference play, it’s that in conference play they compiled six of their nine wins against bottom teams and zero wins against UW and UCLA.
UCLA still good. Oregon Schools still not.

Bow down to Washington.

Cuttin’ Rug: Washington, UCLA, Arizona State, Cal

Alive: Arizona

SEC: Miz/Trey – Thank goodness the regular season is over, right?  I’ll have to say (Miz), that was an abysmal performance by the entire conference excluding LSU.  Nobody other than the Tigeauxers seemed to be able to step up.  I man, holy crap; there’s only three teams out of twelve that have losses numbering in the single digits - LSU, South Cackalacky, and Florida.  While LSU easily wrapped up the West’s top tournament seed and the outright regular season conference title, they still managed to squander away much more valuable Big Tournament seeding by losing both games last week – at home to Vandy and away at Auburn.  The Auburn War Eagle…Tigers…whatever they wanna be called, have been flying under the radar for most of the conference season.  After beginning conference play 1-3 with an overall record of a very modest 12-7, Auburn finished off the conference play with a 9-3 run and the 2nd seed coming out of the West.  Watch out for Auburn to make some SEC tourney noise and crash into an NCAA tournament invitation (Trey Note: Auburn has a great chance of winning the SEC tourney, they’ve got the talent).

As for the SEC East?  Freaking-a.  Tennessee was poised to have sole possession of the East crown after beating the Gamecocks in their hizzy.  Then, on senior night, the Vols invited Bammer to hoop it up a bit and were sure to take the game into overtime until a last-second-desperation heave banked off the backboard directly into the hoop giving Bammer the win at the Vols’ house.  It was actually a fitting end to a season filled with inconsistency for Tennessee.  The Vols still wrapped up the top seed in the East by virtue of the tiebraker over the Cocks.  Florida hosted Kentucky Saturday for what many will say was a battle for not-the-NIT.  Kentucky is on the verge of not receiving an NCAA tournament bid for the first time since 1991 (music to my ears…Miz again, by the way).  By beating the Cats, Florida kept hopes alive to make it into the Field of 65 by winning a game in the SEC Tournament (Trey Note: we’ll probably need 2, the SOS thanks to the terrible SEC is going to kill us).

*Or, we can dance…safely:

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