Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

We're getting to the conference tournaments in NCAA basketball. 12 conferences have completed their regular seasons and are ready to start the tournaments. There are still 20 conferences that will finish their regular seasons this upcoming week. This is a really exciting time for college basketball fans. The teams that won the regular season championship are not guaranteed anything except an NIT birth. They have to win their conference tournament to get into the NCAA tournament. Even the Ivy League, which hasn't had a conference tournament in the past, has one this year. There is room for at-large births, but many teams know they either won't make it as an at-large team or they don't want to leave it up to a committee to decide their NCAA tournament readiness.

It's been an amazing year (not calendar year, stay with me) in sports. Going back to the 2016 NCAA Men's basketball championship - a buzzer-beater for Villanova to win. Then in the NBA Cleveland rallies from down 3-1 in the series to win. Then in Major League Baseball the Cubs come back from 3-1 in the series to win, with the 7th game going into extra innings. The NCAA Football championship was won by Clemson with 1 second to go in the game. Finally, Super Bowl 51 was last night and New England rallied from 25 points down to force the first overtime in Super Bowl history and New England took the OT kickoff and marched down the field for a touchdown to win.