{"id":1643,"date":"2017-03-06T11:24:05","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T17:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/?p=1643"},"modified":"2017-03-06T11:24:20","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T17:24:20","slug":"2017-big-sky-tournament-forecast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/2017-big-sky-tournament-forecast\/","title":{"rendered":"2017 Big Sky tournament forecast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Big Sky\u00a0Conference<\/strong>\u00a0(conference rank: 26th)<br \/>\nMarch 7, 9-11<br \/>\nAll games at Reno.<br \/>\n<strong>kPOY:<\/strong>\u00a0Jacob Wiley, Eastern Washington.<br \/>\n<strong>Regular season champ:<\/strong>\u00a0North Dakota (preseason #146 \/ 1st Big Sky, current #184)<br \/>\n<strong>Overachiever: <\/strong>Eastern Washington\u00a0(preseason #250, current #186)<br \/>\n<strong>Underachiever:<\/strong>\u00a0Idaho State\u00a0(preseason #238, current #329)<\/p>\n<p>Weber State, North Dakota, and Eastern Washington are ranked 183, 184, and 186, respectively, at press time. And fifth-seeded Montana is ranked 194th. So practically speaking, there are four identical teams in Reno which makes predicting an outcome difficult.\u00a0North Dakota won the NIT auto-bid by finishing 14-4 in league play, but Eastern Washington led the league in efficiency margin during conference play.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It appears all of these teams are auditioning for the opportunity to pull off the first 16 vs 1 upset in NCAA tournament. The best non-conference win by a Big Sky team this season was Portland\u00a0State&#8217;s December win at #107 San Francisco. There was only one other Tier B\u00a0win by league members and it was barely so, a Weber State win at #146 Utah State.<\/p>\n<p>Northern Colorado is postseason-ineligible and as such, was not invited to compete in Reno. &#8216;UNC banned from postseason&#8217; should have been a headline in all the papers. Alas, a\u00a0missed opportunity for clickbait.<\/p>\n<pre><b>                       Qtrs Semis Final Champ<\/b>\r\n 2 Eastern Washington   100  75.7  40.8  21.7\r\n 1 North Dakota         100  68.2  37.7  20.4\r\n 3 Weber St.            100  66.2  37.4  20.2\r\n 5 Montana              100  58.7  31.2  16.3\r\n 4 Idaho                100  41.3  18.3   8.0\r\n 6 Montana St.         80.3  31.1  14.2   6.1\r\n 8 Portland St.        73.0  27.0  11.6   4.8\r\n 7 Sacramento St.      64.9  18.7   6.0   1.9\r\n 9 Northern Arizona    27.0   4.8   1.1   0.2\r\n10 Idaho St.           35.1   5.7   1.1   0.2\r\n11 Southern Utah       19.7   2.6   0.5   0.08<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big Sky\u00a0Conference\u00a0(conference rank: 26th) March 7, 9-11 All games at Reno. kPOY:\u00a0Jacob Wiley, Eastern Washington. Regular season champ:\u00a0North Dakota (preseason #146 \/ 1st Big Sky, current #184) Overachiever: Eastern Washington\u00a0(preseason #250, current #186) Underachiever:\u00a0Idaho State\u00a0(preseason #238, current #329) Weber State, North Dakota, and Eastern Washington are ranked 183, 184, and 186, respectively, at press time. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1643"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1658,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643\/revisions\/1658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}