It\u2019s that time of the year in college basketball.<\/p>\n
The snow is melting. The days are lengthening. Games involving Maine and Idaho are gaining importance outside the Pine Tree and Gem States, respectively.<\/p>\n
Yes, it\u2019s conference tournament week throughout the land. Play began on Monday and through Sunday, March 15, 31 Division I men\u2019s college basketball tournaments will be staged, and 31 conference tournament champions will be crowned. Each will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, a prestigious honor for any program as well as traditionally the only way into the tournament<\/a> for members of conferences in the distant past. The full men\u2019s conference tournament schedule<\/a> can be found here, from the Ohio Valley\u2019s event in Evansville, Ind., to the Big Ten\u2019s in Chicago.<\/p>\n Sunday afternoon\u2019s Atlantic Sun title game pit two programs looking to reach their first Division I NCAA tournament against one another: top-seeded Central Arkansas and third-seeded Queens. Bears senior guard Camren Hunter was unstoppable, scoring 49, but it came in a losing effort, thanks to an impressive outing by the Royals. Chris Ashby was lights out for Queens, knocking down 10-of-19 shots\u2014all from three-point range\u2014en route to 34 points in the 98\u201393 overtime win. We should have plenty of incredible basketball ahead of us this month, but the ASUN title game could go down on the shortlist of its best games. <\/p>\n Here, in tabular form, is a look at every team that has clinched a bid to the Big Dance thus far\u2014as well as when each team last made the tournament.<\/p>\n NCAA men\u2019s tournament automatic bids won so far<\/p>\n CONFERENCE<\/p>\n WINNER<\/p>\n FIRST TOURNAMENT APPEARANCE SINCE…<\/p>\n Atlantic Sun<\/p>\n Queens<\/p>\n First in program history<\/p>\n Big South<\/p>\n High Point<\/p>\n 2025<\/p>\n Missouri Valley<\/p>\n Northern Iowa<\/p>\n 2016<\/p>\n Ohio Valley<\/p>\n Tennessee State<\/p>\n 1994<\/p>\n Northeast<\/p>\n Long Island*<\/p>\n 2018<\/p>\n *Long Island earns autobid regardless of Northeast title game result with Mercyhurst ineligible.<\/p>\n More College Basketball on Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n Listen to SI\u2019s college sports podcast,\u00a0Others Receiving Votes, below or on\u00a0Apple<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Spotify<\/a>. Watch the show on\u00a0SI\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s that time of the year in college basketball. The snow is melting. The days are lengthening. Games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-157354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}