HL Tournament

Valparaiso is 8-0 at home in conference play; Oakland is 8-0; Green Bay and Cleveland are 7-1. Home court matters a lot.

But there are a lot of possibilities. Nobody got through the league unscathed. Cleveland State beat GB twice, and Valpo beat CSU twice, but otherwise they've all beaten each other. And even 5th seeded Detroit has beaten Valpo, Oakland, and CSU, so they know they can beat these teams. Valpo's home court advantage is big, but it is still less than 50/50 that they win even two straight at home against Det/CSU, and then GB/Oakland. Gotta like OU's draw - they'll play UIC or WSU in the second round, and that's darn near as good as a double bye. Green Bay's got the seniors.

For the Horizon as a conference, the best team to win is probably Green Bay, followed closely by Valpo. That would get the best seeding. GB winning the tournament by beating Valpo in the final is better than Valpo winning it by beating GB - GB will end up in that scenario with a higher RPI and two wins - road at Miami, road at Valpo - that are better than Valpo will have if Valpo wins it (Valpo has no win to match Miami, and beating GB in the ARC is not as good as GB beating Valpo in the ARC). Of course, the difference won't much matter - if Valpo is more likely to reach the Sweet 16 from a #13 seed than GB is to reach the Sweet 16 from a 12 seed, then seeding doesn't matter, does it?

Oddly, from the conference standpoint, the best scenario (other than a good seed and winning a round or two by Valpo or GB) would be a win by Detroit. Why? Because Detroit would quite likely be assigned a play-in game, which they could win. And a play-in game counts toward conference shares of the tournament revenue for the next 5 years. In other words, if 16th seeded Detroit beats, say, Charleston Southern in a play in, and then gets creamed by Kentucky, the league would get 2 shares for each of the next five years (for two games), but if Valpo gets seeded 12th and loses by 1 point in overtime, the league will get 1 share, for one game. (Of course, thie play-in scenario would apply to UIC, WSU, or YSU winning the tournament, too, but I just don't see that happening, and they'd be more likely to lose in the play-in). The worst scenario for the conference is probably an Oakland or CSU tournament win, because either probably draws a 15th or non-play-in 16th seed, and goes out in the first round.

Valpo's the safe choice; Green Bay their biggest threat; OU has the nice draw and Kahlil Felder, but I don't think is quite as good overall as CSU; Detroit is the long shot dark horse that is unlikely to win it but dangerous for the higher seeds to play; UIC/WSU/YSU are the no-way it happens, though WSU is getting its starters back from injury and UIC has been playing better of late, and Oakland can't overlook that game in the second round.

That's a solid breakdown.  Hard to argue with any of that. 

If anybody other than Valpo and Oakland wants to get to the NCAAs, they should do it this year, because those two teams are going to be really hard to catch the next couple years.