There’s always talk this time of the college basketball season that the conference tournaments – especially in the power ones – are nothing more than reasons for, as the late Marquette and Utah coach Rick Majerus used to say, “four-day cocktail parties.”
Yes, they are fun and great reasons for alumni to get together in a city that usually has multi-star restaurants.
But the tournaments are the chance for those teams that didn’t have great regular seasons to improve their resumes and impress the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee.
Take Indiana, for example. The Hoosiers entered the Big Ten Tournament with a 19-12 record and a resume that wouldn’t exactly assure a place in the 68-team field.
They beat Northwestern in the second round, not a great win in itself but a chance to face No. 8 Maryland in the quarterfinals. A win there over a team with an RPI in the top 10 would be why coaches never want to get rid of the tournaments.