Conference tournament week consistently proves to be one of the best times of the year. College basketball games are on seemingly all day, every day from Wednesday all the way to Selection Sunday. But questions are consistently asked how much those games impact seeding at the NCAA Tournament.
Selection committee chair Bubba Cunningham was asked specifically about the SEC Tournament before speaking generally. He says “every game matters” going back to when the regular season began to when teams add a conference championship to their resume.
“Every game does matter,” Cunningham said. “We’ll be watching the tournaments. The top seeds in most of these leagues are obviously in the tournament. I think the biggest distinction for us will be when we actually do the scrubbing. How does one team compare to the team that would be above them?
“Maybe there’s a modification, maybe there’s not based on the success in the last week of the season, the last week of the regular season, and now that we’re in championship week. Every game does matter, we do pay very close attention to that and it may or may not move somebody up or down on the seed line but we’ll certainly consider what happens this week.”
This from Cunningham comes shortly after John Calipari made his thoughts on the SEC Tournament well known. A philosophy dating back to his time with Kentucky, Calipari claims to not care too much about results from Nashville. Especially with Arkansas perceivably comfortably inside the field of 68.
Calipari is instead using the SEC Tournament as an opportunity to improve the Razorbacks’ seeding when revealed on Selection Sunday. His overall goal is to cut down the nets in early April, not before going to watch the bracket reveal show.
“I don’t care about the conference tournament,” Calipari said. “Which is why we won it so many times because I could care less. The tournament that matters is the NCAA Tournament.”We have seen plenty of seasons where success in conference tournaments has gotten a team off the bubble and into the field. A tournament like the SEC is going to be filled almost exclusively with Quad 1 opportunities, being tough to ignore if a team goes on a three or four-game winning streak.
Cunningham admits the selection committee will be paying attention and will have decisions to make on seed lines based on the results produced.
