NCAA tournament: Teams earn automatic bids with conference upsets

• Cinderella is making plans for the Big Dance! Several conference champions have earned spots in the upcoming NCAA tournament.
• Teams like St. Francis (PA), UNC Wilmington, High Point University and others are celebrating. They’ll find out their seed on Sunday, March 16.
• The NCAA tournament top seeds are also almost set, with Auburn, Duke and Houston nearly locked in.

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It is Championship Week in men’s college basketball, and teams winning their conference championships are earning automatic bids to the NCAA tournament. On Tuesday, March 11, four more teams punched their tickets.

The total number of automatic bids has reached eleven. Three teams, Omaha, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville and High Point University, will make their NCAA tournament debuts next week. High Point Head Coach Alan Huss explained what it meant to his team after the Panthers won the Big South title.

“Other than the birth of my kids, my wife will probably get mad if I don’t say my wedding day, so I’ll say that too; other than those moments, I don’t know if there’s anything better than the NCAA tournament,” Huss said. “Being a part of it, it’s the greatest sporting event on planet earth.”

Who earned automatic bids Tuesday, March 11?

He might be right. What other sport can send a team with a losing record, like St. Francis of Pennsylvania, to the dance? Tuesday night, March 11, they pulled the upset over top seed Central Connecticut 46-43 to win the Northeast Conference championship and punch their first-ever ticket to the tournament.

Also Tuesday night, the second seed in the Colonial Athletic Association, UNC Wilmington, fought off a tough challenge from 12-seed Delaware to win the conference championship and earn the right to play in the field of 68. It’s the Seahawks’ seventh appearance but their first in eight years.

What’s the latest on the number one seeds?

The tournament’s projected top seeds remain much the same as they have for the last month. Auburn, Duke and Houston are as close to locks as you can get. The third number one will likely be decided in the SEC tournament, which tips off Wednesday, March 12. Florida, Tennessee and Alabama are each hoping to impress the committee. The Crimson Tide also took down Auburn Saturday, March 8, in overtime. After the win, Head Coach Nate Oates made the case for his team.

“I think with our quality wins, we’ve got certainly to be in the mix. It’s just, you know, do we have too many losses? We lost four of these ones here in the last seven, which wasn’t ideal, but I also don’t think anybody in the country’s played a seven-game stretch like we’ve played either,” Oates said. “So, you know, we’ve fought, battled, come up with a big win. We’ll see. And if we’re not a one seed, we’re a two seed; that’s not the worst thing either.”

We’ll find out on Selection Sunday, March 16, but there are still some very meaningful conference tournament games to play in the next five days.