OVC Basketball Tournament Format

saluno22

All-Conference
Mar 1, 2006
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Was perusing the various conference tournament brackets this morning and stumbled upon this one...



The OVC tournament looks like something I drew when I was 7 before I knew what a bracket was supposed to look like. Essentially gives a tremendous advantage to regular season success, but adds an extra day to the event.

I actually like it when there is a true round robin regular season schedule (or double round robin), but not when there is schedule imbalances that exist in mega conferences.
 

schuele

All-American
Apr 17, 2005
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I get it but...why place so much importance on the regular season if you are not awarding them the auto-bid, which they can do but none of the conferences do that.
Yeah the mid-major conferences can't have it both ways. They want the intrigue and excitement that goes with having their conference tournament champion get the automatic bid, but then they have remorse when the team (like South Dakota State, for example) that they've been touting all year gets knocked out.
 

jlb321_rivals110621

All-American
Aug 8, 2014
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These small conferences benefit the most if their NCAA tournament rep(s) win a game or 2 in the tournament. In most cases their best chance for advancing is having the regular season champion receive the automatic bid.
 
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saluno22

All-Conference
Mar 1, 2006
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I get it but...why place so much importance on the regular season if you are not awarding them the auto-bid, which they can do but none of the conferences do that.
Oh yeah, definitely could do that. I think the Ivy League did that for a while in basketball, possibly the Pac-10, too, before expansion. (I know as of a couple years ago, the Pac-12 still didn't have a conference baseball tournament either.)
 
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cubsker_rivals142943

All-Conference
May 29, 2003
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Check out what conf USA does. Last four games in the conference reg season are against teams with similar records to you to give the top teams a better schedule.
 
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