With just an hour and a half until the first game of this year's tournament, it's time to finalize that bracket that you have been struggling over for the past two days. Hopefully you have studied the team's and looked at their last ten games and match ups to see who is likely to win. Many people do not care about the play-in games tonight or tomorrow, but I think it is exciting. I will use this post to explain the games being played tonight to those of you who may not quite understand.
1. Due to the recent expansion of the tournament this year to 68 teams, four teams will play tonight and four teams will play tomorrow to get into the field of 64 that starts on Thursday. The tournament committee decided to have four teams who earned a bid to the tournament by winning their conference tournaments last week and four teams who received at large bids (meaning they were chosen to be in the tournament based on their entire body of work for the whole year, but they did lose in their conference tournaments last week) to have to play against each other tonight and tomorrow in order to get into the field of 64 to play on Thursday or Friday.
2. Tonight's games feature Arkansas-Little Rock vs. North Carolina-Asheville at 5:30 pm (Central time) on TruTv and then at 8 pm (CT) on the same channel UAB (University of Alabama-Birmingham) vs. Clemson University. My picks for these games are North Carolina-Asheville winning the first game and UAB winning the second game.
3. The winner of the first game tonight will have to face Pittsburgh, who is the number 1 seed in the SouthEast Region of the bracket on Thursday. The winner of the Clemson/UAB game will play earn a 12 seed and play West Virginia on Thursday in the East Region.
4. In the past tournaments, there was only one play in game, this year there are four. It is kind of like an appetizer for the main meal coming on Thursday and Friday! In the past, this play in game really didn't matter, but these do. The right to earn a 12 seed is very important because as history has told us for the last ten years, every year, at least one number 12 seeded team wins in the first round against a 5 seed. Even with the NIT tournament starting tonight also, I know that I will definitely be watching these play-in games and getting excited for the big dance on Thursday and Friday! Enjoy the games tonight and come back tomorrow for my thoughts and picks for tomorrow's games!
Any comments or questions? Please comment! Thanks for reading!
Derek
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