The first two NCAA Tournament bids have been dealt out during the earliest parts of Championship Week, as both Yale and Austin Peay punched their tickets into the Big Dance with conference championships.
For the Bulldogs, it was their first NCAA Tournament clincher since 1962 as they beat Columbia 71-55, capping their Ivy League title. Princeton finished just behind Yale in the league standings.
Austin Peay won four games in four days of the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament, upsetting Belmont and Tennessee-Martin in the process. The Governors finished the regular season just 14-17 and 7-9 in conference play before going on their run.
In the Missouri Valley Conference, Northern Iowa and Evansville face off to win the conference’s auto-bid today, after the Panthers upset top-seed Wichita State yesterday. Winthrop and UNC-Asheville settle the Big South champion today as well, with Winthrop coming in as a slight favorite, finishing just one-game ahead of Asheville in the final conference standings.
The most interesting auto-bid to be settled today, though, comes out of the Atlantic Sun Conference.
Florida Gulf Coast, which just blew out regular season champion North Florida, takes on Stetson for the conference tournament final. However, Stetson is ineligible for the NCAA Tournament, bringing in a confusing and controversial conference rule. Should Stetson win, the conference rules that a team ineligible for the NCAA Tournament winning the tournament triggers the regular season champion to earn the auto-bid. Yes, if FGCU loses, the team they just blew out and beat two out of three times this season will get the bid ahead of them.
Welcome to Championship Week, everyone.
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