The Tennessee Volunteers will replace the Memphis Tigers as the #1 ranked team in the country next week following their 66-62 win over the team that currently holds that title. The game certainly lived up to the hype, evolving from a high-scoring track meet early on to an every-possession-is-crucial dog fight down the stretch. From the looks of things, both teams left everything they had out on the floor Saturday night, and it so happened that the team entering the game as the second-ranked team in the nation was slightly better than the previously undefeated Tigers. That may or may not be the case again if and when these two teams meet down the road, with, frankly, a lot more on the line.
Being the top-ranked team in the Associated Press poll is surely a great honor for any college basketball program, but in the end, a team can be the consensus best in the land for the whole year. It doesn’t much matter if they don’t get the job done in March (and April).
To that end, I earlier proposed that there were a few games on Saturday’s slate that had to the potential to, in reality, be bigger — or at least more significant — in terms of the Big Dance than the Tennessee-Memphis encounter. After the jump, we follow up on the outcomes of those games.
Ivy League: Cornell 74, Brown 65
The Cornell Big Red is just a single win away from ensuring itself a berth in the 2008 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Cornell has yet to lose a conference game this season, improving to 10-0 in the Ivy League and 18-5 following Saturday’s win.
Cornell’s win also served to severely damage Brown’s hopes of contending for the Ivy League crown, as the Bears not only fall to 7-3 following the loss, but are also on the wrong end of a tiebreaker after being swept by the Big Red during the season. This development, combined with Penn’s loss to Harvard on Saturday night, means that just one more Big Red win will ensure that Cornell will represent the Ivy League in March.
Summit League: Missouri Kansas City 75, Centenary 65 (OT)
The eight-team field is set for the Summit League’s conference tournament following Missouri Kansas City’s victory in Shreveport on Saturday night. The Kangaroos’ road win improved their conference record to 5-11, which, combined with the fact that a total of four of those wins came from two-game sweeps of ninth and tenth place Centenary and South Dakota State, is good enough to lock up the eighth and final available berth in the conference tournament.
Though the field is now set, most of the teams in the conference still have two games remaining on their schedules, meaning there is nothing definite about how the eight teams will be seeded.
Missouri Kansas City joins Oral Roberts, IUPUI, Oakland, IPFW, North Dakota State, Western Illinois and Southern Utah in the 2008 tournament, set to begin March 8 in Tulsa.
UPDATE: It’s been brought to my attention that North Dakota State and South Dakota State are both, in fact, not allowed to participate in the conference tournament due to NCAA regulations regarding reclassification of schools. My bad. Still, congratulations to Missouri Kansas City on its clinching the coveted #7 seed in this year’s Summit League tournament!
