The Day One festivities are over, and the Big South takes a day off to travel, and a couple more tournaments start tomorrow, but for tonight, the Horizon League takes center stage with four opening round games. A truly fascinating year in the Horizon, as the league continues to get better and better and we can probably (finally) officially say that this league (and the MVC) have officially passed the Mid-American as the 2 best mid-majors in the Midwest.
As of writing this, there are 15 Horizon submissions. Here are the championship picks:
- 8 for #1 Valpo
- 4 for #2 Cleveland St. (Gersh, J, Lynch, and Teddy)
- 2 for #3 Detroit (Gross and Lohse)
- 0 for #4 UW-Milwaukee
- 1 for #5 Butler (RSmith)
As for tonight’s games, no one is going for the really big upsets, as everyone has #3 Detroit and #4 UW-Milwaukee holding serve tonight. However, 4 people (Doogan, Gersh, J, and Teddy) like #8 Wright St. to beat #5 Butler, and the majority (9 people) have #7 Green Bay in the mild upset of #6 Youngstown St. Only Bry, Doogan, Rikey, RSmith, Teddy, and Waters have YSU. Obviously, the games tonight are very important for Gross, Lohse, and RSmith, who put their Horizon champion pick on the line tonight.
As for some Horizon history, this conference has required a perfect bracket to win it in each of the past two years. While the CTC has been around for well over a decade, the “recorded history” goes back four years. Waters won the first Horizon title on record in ’08. Bry took the ’09 title. And, then in each of the past two years, a perfect bracket was required for this title. Doogan and Teddy both ran the table in 2010, while Bry went 9-for-9 last year.
