The Big Sky rewards its regular-season champ with hosting duties for the conference tourney. This season, the scramble for that very important distinction was pretty wild with four teams in the mix over the final two weeks. Montana improbably gave itself a shot at hosting by winning at Eastern Washington 77-76 on February 28. But they still needed Sacramento State to drop its final two games of the season, which is exactly what happened.
In addition to a bid to the NCAA tournament, the national scoring title is at stake in Missoula as well. Eastern Washington’s Tyler Harvey currently leads Northwestern State’s Zikiteran Woodley by 0.5 points per game and has a 0.7 ppg edge over BYU’s Tyler Haws. Oddly, Harvey’s father was officiating the WCC semifinal game between BYU and Portland on Monday night. Talk about a conflict of interest.
Big Sky
All-kenpom.com: Martin Breunig, Montana (kPOY); Mikh McKinney, Sacramento State; Venky Jois, Eastern Washington; Tyler Harvey, Eastern Washington; Kris Yanku, Northern Arizona.
March 12-14 at Montana
Semis Final Champ 1 Montana 85.3 68.1 46.4 2 E. Washington 68.1 44.4 21.9 3 Sacramento St. 60.8 27.4 10.5 4 N. Arizona 63.1 25.9 10.8 5 N. Colorado 36.9 11.0 3.4 6 Portland St. 39.2 11.1 3.2 7 Idaho 31.9 7.8 2.6 8 Weber St. 14.7 4.3 1.2