Three more automatic bids last night, earning three teams their coveted one-paragraph summary on Uncertain Principles:
Wright State: The shocker so far (for small values of “shocker”), the unranked Raiders beat #19 Butler to win the Horizon League title and a trip to the NCAA’s. Though Butler is nationally ranked, they were co-champs with Wright State in the regular season, and Wright State won the tiebreaker and got to host the championship.
North Texas: The Mean Green assured that tehre will be at least one school witha color nickname in the field of 65, beating Arkansas State behind 24 points from Calvin Watson, who shot 6-7 from three-point range. This is North Texas’s first NCAA bid in almost 20 years, so congratulations to them.
Oral Roberts University: The vanity university of everyone’s favorite 80’s televangelist edged Oakland to win the Mid-Continent Conference title. They trailed by 11 at half, after Oakland’s Erik Kangas went 6-8 from three to open the game. He cooled off in the second half, and the Golden Eagles came back to win their second straight bid to the NCAA’s, a clear sign that we are living in the End Times.
The power conference tournaments start today– Syracuse plays UConn at 2:00, so I know what will be distracting me all afternoon– but there are still some little guys left to go, with the Northeast Conference and Big Sky Conference champions being decided today.