The time has come. Bring me all of the hate you have because I’m probably not picking your college basketball team to win its conference this year. Or am I?
Conference predictions are always a bit of a crapshoot, mostly because there’s weird criteria for them, especially with the mid-majors. So what if I picked (insert team here) to win the (insert conference here), who’s going to the NCAA Tournament?
To clear up any potential confusion, here’s how these previews will work:
* one conference regular season champion
* the regular season champion also gets pegged as the automatic bid for their respective conference
* one conference Player of the Year prediction
* between one and three top challengers for my predicted conference champion so you know who to keep an eye on as the season moves along
As has been the case in the past, I will refrain from making my own prediction for the Summit League due to a conflict of interest. Instead, a general consensus will be taken from three different preview magazines as well as the media poll, which was released on Oct. 14. I will make my own prediction for CPOY but will also provide the consensus for that as well.
I’ve done this in the past, but how well have I done with predictions like this? Here are the numbers from my 2014-15 predictions:
* 17 for 32 on conference champion predictions; seven other predicted winners finished second
* 8 for 32 on conference Player of the Year predictions; three others were from the same team as predicted winner
With that, let us begin.
Next: AAC