[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by philcski

I think you're missing my point... there's a HUGE financial incentive for the league if the top seed is a lock for an at-large to lose in their conference tournament... and 95% of the time the seed hit doesn't matter... and the A-10 is notorious for having head-scratching results in their conference tournament, even if you don't think my '04 example makes sense.

On that sentiment, Gonzaga did a disservice to the WCC by steamrolling St. Mary's in the final the other day.

I get what you are saying and it makes sense from the perspective of the league that they would want that to happen. But not from the player perspective. You can't tell these players to go out and not give it their best for the benefit of the league. It just doesn't work that way. For one, I think you'd be surprised to learn that for a lot of big time schools, the number one goal of the season is to be the conference champion. Not saying that they don't want to win the national title but the conference championship is a much more realistic goal. These schools in your conference are who you are recruiting against and it's a big deal to be able to say that every year, you have a strong chance to be conference champion and be in the running for national champ. I don't think this can be underestimated. Take a situation like in the ACC with Duke, UNC, NC St, and Wake all being so close to each other. These players constantly see each other in the offseason. Bragging rights are huge and you have them when you are conference champ. Same thing up in the Big East where a lot of the prime players come from the area between NY and DC. Florida or Kansas can win the national championship but that conference championship is very important in the regional areas.