The Final Update: Bilas Invitational Tournament March 11 Update

Whew. That was rough, having to put together a tournament with the likes of Lamar and Western Kentucky. Now, let's get back to good old-fashioned Trillas-style elitism, without all the Communistic welfare cases dragging down the bottom end.




Rising faster than the sun on Daylight Savings Time (*=moving into the field of 68):
+18: Marshall*
+12: Ohio, Cincinnati
+10: St. Bonaventure
+9: New Mexico State, Xavier, Louisville
+7: South Dakota State, New Mexico, Florida State

Dropping faster than the sun when Daylight Savings Time ends (*=moving out of the field of 68):
-12: Mississippi State* (also ineligible at 8-9 in SEC), Washington
-9: Oregon
-6: Tennessee
-5: Oral Roberts, West Virginia, Purdue, Virginia, St. Louis, Gonzaga (making room for all these surprise conference tourney runs)

UConn, Seton Hall, Northwestern and Minnesota miss out on spots with those pesky losing conference records, although UConn at least made a valiant effort to dig out of the hole.

Your final full S-Curve:

Kentucky	N. Carolina	Syracuse	Ohio St.
Duke	Missouri	Kansas	Michigan St.
Baylor	Wichita St.	Marquette	Indiana
Memphis	Louisville	Georgetown	Wisconsin
Michigan	New Mexico	Florida St.	Florida
Gonzaga	St. Louis	Creighton	Vanderbilt
UNLV	Murray St.	Temple	St. Mary's
California	Alabama	Iowa St.	Kansas St.
Long Beach St.	Texas	Cincinnati	San Diego St.
Harvard	VCU	Purdue	Virginia
Belmont	Notre Dame	Southern Miss	BYU
Iona	West Virginia	Xavier	NC State
Miami (FL)	Arizona	S. Dakota St.	MTSU
South Florida	New Mexico St.	Marshall	Drexel
Colorado St.	Ohio	Oregon	Washington
St. Bonaventure/Colorado	LaSalle/Tennessee	Akron/Oral Roberts	St. Joseph's/Davidson

And click here for the final BIT bracket.

--Given how they were tickling the lower edges of the BII's top 68 all month, maybe we shouldn't be all that surprised by St. Bonaventure winning the A-10 tourney.
--With my only stipulation being that teams from the same conference should not play in the first round, you're damn right one region has Big Ten teams as its top four seeds. And I still think a Michigan State/Washington first-round game could be epic.
--As payback for that kind of good karma, I give you a first-round meeting between Baylor and South Florida, two teams who occasionally act like the game is a gaudy pair of socks that they're dying to give away.

While a tournament like this will never come off, I hope you have the kind of fun I do speculating about what might have been.