Nutmeg pride & George Mason's return

NEC #3-seed Sacred Heart this evening became the second Connecticut men's basketball team to reach a conference championship today, joining Hartford from the America East conference. Sacred Heart beat #2 Wagner to set up a Wednesday meeting on ESPN2 against #4 Mount St. Mary's. Because SHU has the better seed, they'll host the title game on their home floor (an unexpected treat made possible by the Mount St. Mary's upset of #1 Robert Morris).

In other Championship Week news, I mentioned earlier that #5-seed William & Mary upset #1 VCU, putting the latter on the bubble -- well, now we know who will be the Pride's opponent in tomorrow night's CAA title game, and it's none other than #3-seed George Mason. This will be Mason's second straight year playing in the CAA final; last year, they made a Cinderella run as a #6 seed, but lost 65-59 to VCU. (In 2006, the year they went to the Final Four, they were actually booted in the semifinals of the CAA tourney!) Tomorrow's game will be at 7:00 PM on ESPN.

Also tomorrow night, at 9:00 PM on ESPN2, it'll be Southern Conference top seed Davidson vs. the Cinderella story of this year's Championship Week to date, #7 Elon -- a team with a 14-18 record and an RPI of #231, now one win from the Big Dance (or rather, the play-in game).

Gonzaga hopes they'll be playing tomorrow night at 9:00 PM on ESPN, in the WCC title game. But first they need to beat Santa Clara in the semis, and right now they're trailing 35-34 with 13:04 left. Go Zags!

UPDATE: Gonzaga wins, 52-48! Not a great game for the Zags -- Pargo only scored 4 points -- but they survived and advanced (albeit with the help of yet another terrible call by the refs down the stretch, as a blatant charge was wrongly called a defensive foul, increasing Gonzaga's lead from 1 to 3). Tomorrow, they'll go for their ninth WCC title in ten years against either St. Mary's or homestanding San Diego.

Comments

[Condor]

"Sacred Heart beat #2 Wagner"

Take that, Nazis.