Never Made the Tournament Club: today has potential to be one of the worst days

Over the last two days, not much happened outside of the expected. Most notably, Longwood needed two missed free throws to force overtime against NC A&T, where it took control. The favorites won (Purdue Fort Wayne, Longwood, Upstate, Bellarmine) and the dogs, save appropriately for The Citadel Bulldogs, lost (Army, High Point, Central Arkansas and Kennesaw State).

Why this might be one of the worst days ever?

Think about it. Think about all that we stand to lose today.

The Bryant Bulldogs, first in the NEC, had a fantastic season. One of our beacons of hope. They face a team in Mt. St. Mary’s that beat them in the tournament on the same floor last year.

Bellarmine, maybe with the fourth-best chance of winning their conference tournament. Fantastic season. They travel to maybe our worst enemy, Liberty, in a game where they are not favored.

Two of our Founding Fathers face off today. The Citadel is a sizeable underdog against top seed Chattanooga, and William and Mary, though a higher seed technically for this opening round game against Northeastern, has been poor of late and just got destroyed by the Huskies.

And of course, there’s Longwood. The Landers face a fellow club member in USC Upstate, who has a fantastic story of its own, so we’ll have a winner and a loser either way. Both of them have had fantastic years, and here at NMTC HQ, we generally do not root for one member over another. It’s only fair to mention though that we’ve been riding the Big South regular season champions all year, and it would be tough to see them go down after a 15-1 year in conference, having already beaten both semifinalists on the other side. We’ll be rooting super hard for whomever wins this game in the finals tomorrow.

Today’s schedule (NMTC teams in bold):

Big South Semifinals

(4) USC Upstate vs (1) Longwood, noon ET, ESPN+

SoCon Quarterfinals

(9) The Citadel vs. (1) Chattanooga, noon ET, ESPN+

Atlantic Sun Semifinals

(2W) Bellarmine at (1E) Liberty, 4 p.m. ET, ESPN+

NEC Semifinals

(4) Mt. St. Mary’s at (1) Bryant, 4 p.m. ET, ESPN+

CAA First Round

(9) Northeastern vs. (8) William and Mary, 5 p.m. ET, FloHoops

Summit League Quarterfinals

(8) Omaha vs. (1) South Dakota State, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN+

(7) Denver vs. (2) North Dakota State, 9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN+