{"id":34,"date":"2016-03-07T10:50:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T16:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/67.227.157.91\/~kenpom\/wp_blog\/2016-big-sky-tournament-preview\/"},"modified":"2016-03-07T10:50:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-07T16:50:22","slug":"2016-big-sky-tournament-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/2016-big-sky-tournament-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"2016 Big Sky tournament preview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Big Sky Conference<br \/>\nMarch 8, 10-12. All games at Reno.<br \/>\nkPOY: Joel Bolomboy, Weber State.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Big Sky action gets underway on Tuesday with four first-round games at the Reno Events Center.<\/p>\n<p>Tournament play is a conflict between fairness and fun and the Big Sky has elected to go in the fun direction this season. The conference abandoned the previous format which awarded home court to the top seed and eliminated the worst teams in the league from even appearing in the bracket. But now, everyone is invited and they\u2019ll all be playing at a very neutral site in Reno. <\/p>\n<p>Weber State is the favorite here, after an eight-loss season where seven losses came by seven points or less. The Wildcats could have been a decent 16-seed if they survived this event, what with a front court of Zach Braxton and Joel Bolomboy that gives the team some power-conference size. However, the mayhem of the last week has nearly assured Weber of getting a 15-seed if they are victorious. Montana is a possibility, as well. The Griz gave Gonzaga a scare earlier in the season, and still had a shot at the top-seed on the final day of the season. A championship game featuring Bolomboy and Montana center Martin Breunig would be entertaining.<\/p>\n<pre>                       Qtrs Semis Final Champ\n 1 Weber St.            100  79.5  58.0  36.4\n 2 Montana              100  72.3  44.8  24.5\n 3 Idaho                100  54.1  24.2  10.4\n 6 Eastern Washington  84.0  43.1  19.8   8.9\n 5 North Dakota        82.2  49.6  19.0   8.5\n 4 Idaho St.            100  46.1  13.7   4.7\n 7 Montana St.         57.9  17.5   7.3   2.6\n 8 Portland St.        63.6  15.0   6.9   2.4\n10 Sacramento St.      42.1  10.2   3.5   1.0\n 9 Northern Colorado   36.4   5.5   1.8   0.4\n12 Southern Utah       17.8   4.4   0.6   0.08\n11 Northern Arizona    16.0   2.8   0.4   0.07\n\n<\/pre>\n<p><u><strong>Big Sky tourney records (since 1999)<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n<pre>Montana           19- 7\nWeber St.         19-12\nNorth Dakota       3- 2\nE. Washington     10- 9\nPortland St.       9-10\nNorthern Arizona  11-13\nNorthern Colorado  4- 5\nIdaho St.          4- 7\nSacramento St.     3- 6\nMontana St.        3-12\nSouthern Utah      0- 1\nIdaho              0- 1\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big Sky Conference March 8, 10-12. All games at Reno. kPOY: Joel Bolomboy, Weber State. Big Sky action gets underway on Tuesday with four first-round games at the Reno Events Center. Tournament play is a conflict between fairness and fun and the Big Sky has elected to go in the fun direction this season. The [&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\/34"}],"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=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}