*Insert March Madness trumpets playing*
Hello everyone, and welcome to Conference Tournament Central! I am your host, Bryce Hopwood, and I will be bringing you content, predictions, news, and much more from today until Selection Sunday. After that, this will be known as NCAA Tournament Central until the beginning of April. I’m such a psycho for college basketball in March that I’m giving a prediction for every single game. That means I have every single conference tournament bracket printed out and am going to be picking every single game and will have a running tally as we go.
The first conference commencing their tournament play is the Atlantic Sun conference. Since they’re the only conference that starts their tournament tomorrow, this write-up/breakdown will be a little more extensive than the others in the coming days will be.
Atlantic Sun Quarterfinals
#1 Lipscomb vs. #8 Kennesaw State
Lipscomb is the one seed and went 23-6 overall and 14-2 in conference. They won the tiebreaker between themselves and Liberty for the top seed and regular season championship. Kennesaw State went 3-13 and 6-25 overall and frankly isn’t very good. Lipscomb is one of the top teams in the country, they’ll take this one with ease.
#4 FGCU vs. #5 NJIT
People forget that the NJIT program at the longest Division I losing streak in history back in the late 2000’s. They lost 51 straight games that spanned 702 days. Now they just went 20-11 overall which gives them their 3rd, 20 win season in their last 5 seasons. People also forget that FGCU aka Dunk City won as a #15 seed against Georgetown in 2013. They went on to win their second round game and secured a Sweet 16 birth only 2 years after moving into Division I. Both went 9-7 in conference play this year and split their season series. I think NJIT has more talent and wins.
#3 North Florida vs. #6 North Alabama
I wish I had a weird rich history of these 2 programs, but I don’t. North Florida has won 6 in a row, including a home win against Liberty, this conference’s 2 seed. They’ve played a bunch of most likely tournament teams, but couldn’t squeeze out a win. North Alabama started 5-2 in conference, but dropped 7 of 9 and now sit where they do. North Florida shoots 45% as a team and North Alabama shoots 39%. Ospreys are the victors.
#2 Liberty vs. #7 Jacksonville
An honorable mention on the top mid major list, Liberty went 25-6 this season and lost a tiebreaker to Lipscomb for the top seed in the conference. They’ve outscored their opponents by 14 points on average per game. They only lost 1 game at home all year. Jacksonville has struggled, but did put up 123 points on an NAIA school. They also have the 3rd most blocks in the country this season. Jacksonville’s average years of experience is .8, meaning this team can only go up. Regardless, Liberty is heading to the semifinal round.
This is just the beginning of the madness, strap in folks, it could get bumpy.
