Tonight, the 8 vs. 9 game of a temporarily expanded NEC Tournament—the first of 302 single-elimination contests scheduled between Monday, February 28th and the start of the 2022 NCAA Tournament Selection Show on Sunday, March 13th—tips off what I hope will be the first “normal” Championship Fortnight since March 2019.
Of these 302 games, the overwhelming majority of them—191—will truly be “win or go home” affairs—part of one of the tournaments that will determine the representative for one of the 22 likely one-bid conferences. So, before I jump into the details of what’s changed in the world of conference tournaments since 2021, for those of you who are only interested in seeing teams clinch bids, I give you .