NCAA Basketball: Predicting winners for all 2021 conference tournaments
By Bryan Mauro
Pac-12
Champion: Oregon Ducks
When the conference tournament starts that is when the Ducks turn it on. As we have all seen in the years past the Ducks always seem to play their best basketball for head coach Dana Altman in March. That usually continues in the NCAA tournament and Oregon is yet again poised to make another big-time run in March this year. They are one of the deepest teams in the Pac-12 and they are a great shooting team. Chris Duarte and Eugene Omoruyi are the go-to guys on offense.
The one thing that may hurt the Ducks is their lack of a true point guard but they are good enough and deep enough to overcome that. The Ducks are going to make the tournament regardless of their showing in the league tournament but they will likely just take care of it by winning the league auto bid.
Sleeper: Stanford Cardinal
Stanford has underachieved this year given the recruiting class they had coming in. The Cardinal were able to secure the commitment of the number six recruit in the nation in Ziaire Williams and the Cardinal started off the season hot as they blew out Alabama and they looked like they were going to live up to the lofty expectations that the Cardinal had placed on them.
Stanford stumbled in conference play and find themselves firmly on the bubble as we get close to Selection Sunday. Oscar De Silva and Jaiden DeLaire make up the rest of the trio with Williams and those guys are going to need to make a run and they are ready to do that. If all of those players are healthy including Williams, Stanford is going to be a tough out.
Patriot League
Champion: Colgate Raiders
The Patriot League has been an interesting conference this year. The league split all 9 teams into three divisions and those are the conference teams they played the whole year. So the schedule is basically a round-robin of two to three other teams within the conference.
Colgate is 11-1 on the season looks like the class of the league aside from Navy. The league tournament has been an exciting one the last few years with the top seed usually losing early. Colgate can light up a scoreboard scoring about 86 points per game. They give up less than 70 so their games in the league are usually decided before they even begin.
Jordan Burns is hoping his last go around with the Raiders ends up in a tournament bid, but the Raiders have the target on their back as they are currently the premier program in the Patriot League.
Sleeper: Lafayette Leopards
The Leopards are an interesting team. They are likely going to get the third seed in the tournament but should still be considered a sleeper because of how good Colgate and Navy have been this season. Lafayette has one of the top scorers in the league in Justin Jaworski and Lafayette has just enough offense to make any game interesting especially when Jaworski is scoring The Leopards don’t play much defense and that could lead to them exiting early but if shots are falling they can make the top teams sweat a bit.