Friday, December 19, 2014

Neutral site tournaments, part 3: no one plays at Christmas anymore

Obviously the vast majority of tournaments are Thanksgiving week.  A few used to be around this time of year, but this year, I can find only 2, one of which is trivial.  Sigh.  Still, a preview is a preview:

Las Vegas Classic (Dec 22-23)
Texas Tech vs. Loyola(Chi)
Houston vs. Boise St

This should be a 2-day cakewalk for Boise and anything else is harmful to the at-large resume.

Diamond Head Classic (Dec 22, 23, 25)
Ohio vs. George Washington
DePaul vs. Colorado
Loyola Marymount vs. Wichita St
Nebraska at Hawaii

Oh.  Significance up and down this entire field.  Nebraska is the pivot point here.  It's technically a road game for them to start, and getting trapped on the wrong side of the bracket means no chances at signature wins in this tournament.  And remember, they've got the Incarnate Word black mark, and just the one quality win over Cincy.  If they can't get 3rd place in this tourney, they'll have a bit of work to do in the B1G.  Which is do-able, but tough.

Colorado has a mess of their own to clean up.  No bad losses yet...but no good wins either.  One hold of serve against DePaul and they'll get two cracks at one here, and they do have Pac-12 play as a backstop.  By the way, DePaul, if you're serious about not being terrible, this is the spot to do something about it.

GWU is kind of in the same situation as Colorado - they need to escape a decent Ohio team and get 2 cracks at a quality win.

3 albatrosses lurk in this bracket, so the 3 bubble teams need to work hard to avoid that side of the bracket.

Meanwhile, Wichita could use a couple wins over tourney teams, and should get a pair of them here.

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