And Yet the First Games Are Also Called the Les Robinson Invitational

Disconcerted by a twelve-team ACC tournament? Yearning for the halycon days of a simple, eight-team bracket?

Then I advise you stay far, far away from the Big West Tournament.

The Big West, with the magic number of eight members, could have the simplest of conference tournaments. So what do they do? They have the lower four seeds play on Wednesday. The winners of those two games play the 3 and 4 seeds on Thursday. Those two winners meet the 1 and 2 seeds on Friday. And the two squads left standing play for the championship on Saturday. In other words the number five seed has to win twice as many games (4) to cut down the nets as the top seed (2).

Now the Big West is, and probably always will be, a one tournament team league. And the temptation to make that one team the best the league has to offer is pretty tempting. But if that's the route you want to go, give the bid to the regular season champ and call it a day, because this? This is just humiliating to half your conference members.

(And in case you care, UNC early season opponent and Tar Heel March postgraduate institution UC Santa Barbara trounced UC Riverside to advance to the next round 76-44.)