Tuesday College Basketball Review

Summit League

(2) IUPUI 64 – (1) Oral Roberts 71

It’s pretty impressive that despite what was lost last year that Oral Roberts is able to grab the automatic bid yet again. Now they’re likely looking at a 14 seed or so and given a good match-up they might be able to put a scare into someone. Oral Roberts won’t be able to keep up with high scoring teams but their defense is solid and they could scare a team prone to scoring droughts.

Horizon

(2) Cleveland State 55 – (1) Butler 70

Bubble teams can take a breather here because Butler saved a bid. The question here is what kind of seed can they receive? A five seems most likely but a four is possible.

Sun Belt

(4) Middle Tennessee State 57 – (3) Western Kentucky 67

Middle Tennessee State was a nice story but Western Kentucky winning this game makes for a better NCAA tournament and that’s really what we’re rooting for. The neat part is that they were able to pick up this win when star Courtney Lee was pretty much horrible. In fact, second leading scorer Tyrone Brazelton needed 2/10 shooting and 9/11 from the line (Middle Tennessee State couldn’t handle his quickness) to get his 13 points. Winning by double digits with those numbers from their stars is impressive. I guess that’s what happens when Jeremy Evans was an absolute stud.

MEAC

(10) Howard 54 – (7) Coppin State 55

(9) Bethune-Cookman 69 – (8) South Carolina State 78

This was just the opening round match-ups to see who gets to play the Morgan State (the one seed) and Hampton (the two seed).

Big Sky

(3) Weber State 70 – (2) Northern Arizona 75

(4) Idaho State 61 – (1) Portland State 72

The outcomes of these games ensure that tomorrow night we’ll get the top two teams in the conference battling it out for the automatic bid with Portland State as the clear favorite due to being the better team and playing on their home floor.

WAC

(9) Louisiana Tech 62 – (8) San Jose State 64

This was just a play-in game to see who gets to play one seed Utah State. That’s not a gimmie for Utah State because they split their regular season games with the Spartans and their home win was by only five points.