It was a bittersweet night at Madison Square Garden, as Louisville came back to defeat Syracuse 78-61 in the final edition of what has consistently been the most memorable conference tournament in college basketball.
The great players like Patrick Ewing, Ray Allen and Allen Iverson. The legendary coaches like John Thompson, Jim Calhoun and Jim Boeheim. The great moments like Connecticut and Syracuse’s six-overtime thriller and Kemba Walker putting the Huskies on his back en route to a Big East Tournament Championship and an eventual NCAA championship in 2011.
All of those memories, great coaches and renowned players will be nothing more than the lore of a conference deceased.
But with the death of this tournament, the death of all conference tournaments should be put into motion.
For the major conferences like the Big Ten, PAC-12, SEC and ACC, this isn’t a major issue, because year in and year out, the victor of the tournament is already fairly deserving of a bid. The automatic bid is nothing more than a formality.
What is irksome about conference tournaments is what happens at the mid-major level.
Take Liberty (15-20) of the Big South, for example. The Flames won one out-of-conference game against a division one opponent, with a rousing 63-62 victory against Western Carolina (14-19).
The team went 6-10 in conference play, but got the automatic bid because for a four-day period, they were hotter than Gardner Webb, Charleston Southern and High Point.
Take a look at the Western Athletic Conference Tournament for another example. Denver and Louisiana Tech, who both went 16-2 in conference, were knocked out in the quarterfinals of the tournament by No. 7 seed Texas State and No. 8 seed University Texas at San Antonio, respectively.
The tournament was left with semifinals composed of the third, fourth, seventh and eighth seed of the tournament. That is not indicative of who the best teams in the conference were.
Last, but certainly not least, is the debacle that occurred in the Sun Belt, as Middle Tennessee State went 28-5 and did not lose a single conference game during the regular season.
The Blue Raiders won all sixteen conference games. Then they had to sweat it out on selection Sunday as Florida International upset them in the semifinals of their conference tournament.
The only purpose conference tournaments serve are to drum up money from ticket sales and sponsorships. Finding a deserving champion is not one of the primary causes. That’s why the conference tournament deserves termination.
Christian Hoppens is a sophomore studying journalism and a staff writer for The Post. Email him at ch203310@ohiou.edu.
