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Another great day of College Hoops today with three more teams obtaining their conference bids to the 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament: Murray State, Winthrop, and East Tennessee State all won their respective conference basketball tournaments. With their victories, there are now four teams that have locked-in automatic bids to the 2010 NCAA Tourney to include Cornell who won the 2010 Ivy League Regular Season Championship to obtain their automatic bid.

In other notable college basketball news on the last Saturday of regular season basketball play today, the Louisville Cardinals pulled off a season sweep of the #1 ranked Syracuse Orangement, #5 K State was upset in overtime by Iowa State, 85-82, #8 West Virginia upset #9 Villanova, 68-66, and South Carolina upset #19 Vanderbilt, 77-73.

2010 OVC Coference Tournament Championship – Murray State 70, Morehead State 65

Murray State (30-4) defeated Morehead State (23-10), 62-51 to win their 14th overall Ohio Valley Conference Tournament, set a school record for number of wins, earned their 14th overall trip to the NCAA Tournament, and became the first Division I school to obtain 30 wins this season. Their win over Morehead State results in the schools first NCAA appearance since 2006 with Morehead State being the 2009 OVC Tournament champion.

Morehead State was trying to obtain their fourth overall OVC title tonight and has the OVC player and defensive player of the year on the squad in Kenneth Faried. The Eagles were held to their lowest point total of the season after beating Murray State 70-65 on February 25th.

In the win tonight, Murray State had four players score in double figures with 10 players seeing significant playing time. There were 12 ties during the game with seven lead changes. Murray State took the lead for good on an Isaac Miles 3 ball at 10:11 to go. The score was tied at 24 at half time in a hard fought game at times between the two in-state rivals.

2010 Big South Conference Tournament Championship – Winthrop 64, Coastal Carolina 53

Winthrop clinched the 2010 Big South Conference tournament championship with a 64-53 win over Coastal Carolina tonight. With the victory, the Winthrop Eagles obtained their 5th NCAA tournament bid in six years and their 9th appearance since 1999.

Mantoris Robinson scored 14 points in the win tonight and Winthrop went ahead for good in the game with 9:49 to go in the second half. Coastal Carolina finished the season at 28-6 but their leading scorer, Joseph Harris was held to just 3 points by Winthrop’s defense. Chad Gray scored 16 points to lead Carolina in the contest. Coastal Carolina will receive an automatic bid to the 2010 NIT Tournament for winning the Big South regular season title.

2010 Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament Championship – East Tennessee State 72, Mercer 66

East Tennessee State clinched their second consecutive trip to the 2010 NCAA Tournament with their 72 – 66 victory over Mercer tonight. East Tennessee State won for the second straight year despite losing three starters from last year’s Atlantic Sun Conference Tourney champions.

Justin Tubbs had 18 points, Tommy Hubbard 14, and Micah Williams 13 as East Tennessee State won their sixth straight game. Mercer was playing in its first Atlantic Sun championship since 1996. James Florence and Danny Emerson were held to a combined 18 points by East Tennessee State after averaging more than 33 points a game this season.

The game was close up until the end with Mercer getting to within a point, 62-61 with 1:44 left in the game on a 3 pointer by Kusnyer. Justin Tubbs responded with a 3 to put East Tennessee State up 66 – 61. Mercer would get within 2 points with 34 seconds left, 68-66, but would not have enough to overcome East Tennessee State. Mercer was only 8 for 16 from the free throw line in the second half of the game.

This will be the third time that ETSU has made back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances. The previous times being 1989-1992 and 2003-04.

Midway through the NCAA season it has become painfully clear that one supposed major conference is going through a massive down spell and could end up with just the conference champion going to the tournament in March.

That conference, it will pain anyone on the West Coast to hear, is the Pac-10, which has been called some nasty names this season and looks about as confused as a Democrat supporter in Massachusetts.

Not a single team has lost less than two games in divisional play and California’s reasonable 13-6 record is the best around, while not a single team found its way into the top 25 for the week ending January 18.

Even worse? Not a single Pac-10 team even received a single vote in the AP poll as the likes of Harvard and William & Mary gleaned more interest than programs that have clearly under-performed badly.

Cal managed one vote in the USA Today poll, and as it stands would probably be the best team in the division, which makes sense given their record coming into conference play but not on performances since.

With consideration to basketball predictions, the loss at home to UCLA was a disappointment, the hiding at Washington more of an embarrassment, but at least with Jerome Randle playing well they managed to beat both Oregon teams despite struggling against the Ducks last Saturday.

But now comes the acid test, especially if there is only to be one Pac-10 team at the tournament – a run of four games on the road – Arizona State, Arizona, USC and UCLA over the next two weeks. A 3-1 record and the Bears will be on their way, but is that going to happen given the confusing nature of this shocking division?

The Pac-10 is a confusing mess that’s for sure. And it’s hard to see where the future is for these storied schools because the finesse and skill is sadly lacking outside of Washington State’s Klay Thompson, who according to some basketball tips could be on his way to the NBA in the summer.

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