March is four days away, and that means it’s banner time.
Sure, the banners we most often think of are for the Final Four or the national championship, but within the next week, programs will celebrate regular-season conference titles. Listen to most coaches, and that’s the goal heading into the season: win the conference and the rest will come.
Plenty of teams around the country have already clinched their regular-season crowns, including Chattanooga, Fairfield, Florida Gulf Coast, Gonzaga, High Point, Middle Tennessee, Southern Indiana and UConn. These titles don’t guarantee automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament, but they commemorate successful seasons and deserve some shine before we make our way into the madness. This week’s power rankings will take stock of the conference title races in the major conferences.
Let’s take a look at how the conference races stand heading into the final weeks of the season:
Dropped: West Virginia (23), Princeton (25)
Almost famous: Ole Miss, Princeton, West Virginia
Unsurprisingly, the Gamecocks have the SEC locked up, three games ahead of the field with two to play. It is South Carolina’s third consecutive SEC title and potentially its second straight undefeated conference season, joining Auburn and Tennessee as the only programs to…
