College basketball’s first conference tournament of the year begins tonight, with four Atlantic Sun games occurring in separate locations across the Southeast.
Here at The Barking Crow, we’re still building out our bracketology model (apologies to all who I’ve told it would be done by now—we’re admittedly running behind). However, we’re far enough into it that we can tell you what it says about the A-Sun Tournament.
If you haven’t been following the Atlantic Sun closely this year, yet you plan to follow this tournament, there are two main contenders. I’ll talk about each of them first, and then get to the real reason you should be reading this, whether you’re following the A-Sun Tournament or not.
Lipscomb
Lipscomb is a very good team, by the A-Sun’s standards, and public consensus has it still in the NCAAT at-large conversation if it fails to capture its league’s automatic bid.
Personally, based on the numbers I’m running, it’s unlikely that Lipscomb could make the A-Sun a two-bid NCAAT league, but it’s certainly possible, especially if the loss comes to Liberty, far and away its main challenger. If the Bisons do lose and don’t receive an NCAAT at-large bid, they’ll go to the NIT as an automatic bid, and likely as a fairly high seed.
In roughly 62% of our 1,000 simulations, Lipscomb wins this tournament.
Liberty
Liberty, for its part, has an outside shot at an NIT at-large bid, especially if regular season champions take care of business elsewhere, thereby leaving open a lot of at-large bids. The Flames (that’s Liberty) tied the Bisons (that’s Lipscomb, and yes, the plural of Bison is usually just Bison, I don’t know how the s got in there) for the regular season title, but lost the tiebreaker, which came down to NET Rating.
In roughly 31% of our simulations, Liberty wins this tournament.
The Odd Decision
North Alabama is the 6-seed in this tournament. They’re not too remarkable of a team, except for the fact that this is their first season as a Division I basketball program, making them ineligible for the NCAAT and the NIT.
The straightforward thing for the Atlantic Sun to do in this situation (and what the WAC is doing with Cal Baptist), would be to not allow North Alabama to play in its tournament. Ensure that the conference tournament champion receives the league’s automatic NCAAT bid, avoid a Lipscomb/North Alabama championship game that only matters in how it affects Lipscomb’s NCAAT seed, and send everyone on their merry way.
As you’ve surmised by now, the Atlantic Sun did not do the straightforward thing.
North Alabama is playing, and if North Alabama wins, the automatic bid will reportedly go to Lipscomb, provided Lipscomb advances at least as far as Liberty.
Now, the probability of North Alabama winning this tournament is low. They’d have to win three games, likely all on the road against teams with better conference records. To even reach the championship, they’d have to upset North Florida tonight (our model gives them about a 17% chance to do that), then either upset Liberty on Thursday or take advantage of a massive stroke of luck and beat Jacksonville at home. From there, they’d probably have to play Lipscomb, who makes the championship in approximately 86% of our simulations, and defeat them.
All of this happens in only two of our 1,000 simulations, so don’t hold your breath on the Atlantic Sun grabbing the spotlight with a headache-inducing conference tournament result. Yes, it would be fun to watch the Atlantic Sun championship on Sunday with ESPN cutting to either Lipscomb or Liberty, watching in a separate location and pulling hard for North Alabama, but this is, for all intents and purposes, but a dream.
Still, there’s no harm in enjoying this while it’s possible. It won’t happen again.*
*Until next year when North Alabama is in the exact same situation and other conferences possibly copy the A-Sun after seeing that this drew some attention.
