Your Championship “Week” Update: Friday, March 6, 2020

The big news of Thursday is #7 Bucknell dumping #2 American and conference Player of the Year Sa’eed Nelson out of the Patriot League tournament in the quarterfinals. Sure, there were other upsets that happened — #3 Lipscomb advanced to the ASun title game, #5 Hampton in the Big South, #5 Boise State in the Mountain West — but nothing as earthshaking as what the Bison did to the Eagles.

Of course, I’m typing this late on Thursday night while there is still a Mountain West game and a West Coast Conference game going on. We’ll see what happens in the AM when I finalize this whole shebang and hit publish!

AM UPDATE: HOLY CRAP, WYOMING WON AGAIN. The #11 seed had never won a Mountain West tournament game before Wednesday, and now they’ve won two. They beat Nevada last night, 74-71, thanks to a 12-2 run with about five minutes left in the game. The WCC game went chalk, with Santa Clara winning by 14.

We get DAYTIME BASKETBALL~! from the Missouri Valley today, and a teeeensy bit of daytime action from the SoCon. Everything else is at night, some of it very late at night. We’ve got semifinal action in the Big South, Mountain West, and Ohio Valley, so those should be your big highlight games to pay attention to today.

Here’s the full rundown for the day, with all times Central as always.

BIG SOUTH SEMIFINALS (ESPN+)

5pm: #2 Winthrop (22-10) vs #3 Gardner-Webb (16-15)
7:30pm: #1 Radford (21-10) vs #5 Hampton (14-18)

MISSOURI VALLEY QUARTERFINALS (ESPN+)

12pm: #1 Northern Iowa (25-5) vs #8 Drake (19-13)
2:30pm: #4 Bradley (20-11) vs #5 Southern Illinois (16-15)
6pm: #2 Loyola Chicago (21-10) vs #7 Valparaiso (17-15)
8:30pm: #3 Indiana State (18-11) vs #6 Missouri State (15-16)

MOUNTAIN WEST SEMIFINALS (CBS Sports Network)

8pm: #1 San Diego State (29-1) vs #5 Boise State (20-11)
10:30pm: #2 Utah State (25-8) vs #11 Wyoming (9-23)

OHIO VALLEY SEMIFINALS (ESPNU)

7pm: #1 Belmont (24-7) vs #4 Eastern Kentucky (16-16)
9:30pm: #2 Murray State (22-8) vs #3 Austin Peay (21-11)

SOCON FIRST ROUND (ESPN+)

4pm: #8 Samford (10-22) vs #9 VMI (8-23)
6:30pm: #7 Wofford (16-15) vs #10 The Citadel (6-23)

WEST COAST SECOND ROUND (WCC Network)

8pm: #5 San Francisco (20-11) vs #8 Loyola Marymount (11-20)
10:30pm: #6 Pepperdine (15-15) vs #7 Santa Clara (20-12)