March Madness almost here

The conference schedule of the NCAA college basketball season is almost over, and we all know what that means ... Conference Championship Week is coming up soon and the start of March Madness. The majority of the major conferences will not start their conference tournaments until the second week in March. The power conference teams have about 4 conference games left before Championship Week gets started. Also, it's never too early to be talking about the NCAA Tournament and Selection Sunday is only 3 Sundays away.

Right now, there are a whole slew of teams that have the possibility to win the NCAA Championship. This is always the case, but particularly in this season because there aren't too many power house teams. Syracuse was going to be one such team, remaining undefeated until they went through a recent slump. As always, it isn't how you play early in the season, but how good you are playing in March.

Florida and Arizona are poised to make deep runs, and they are both bracketing undefeated Wichita State in the rankings. Wichita State is going to be an interesting team for people making their brackets this year. They made it to the Final 4 last year and nearly beat the eventual champion Louisville. Other perennial powers like Kansas and Duke are hanging around the upper echelon of the NCAA. Louisville can't be overlooked either, as they only have 4 losses on their record.

Then, you have a bunch of mid-major conference teams that are having great seasons. This includes Creighton, Saint Louis and San Diego State. Other teams that have struggled in recent NCAA tournaments are making their presence felt like Villanova and Cincinnati. Virginia and Iowa State are probably the surprise teams of the season.

This leaves the Big Ten teams: Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio State. The Big Ten doesn't have a dominant team this season and they continually beat up on each other to knock them all down in the rankings. Top to bottom, the Big Ten is the best conference, with lowly teams like Nebraska coming up with huge wins. The ACC, Big East, Pac 12 and American Conferences are all top heavy with lots of bottom feeders. The Big 12 is the only other conference that compares to the level of overall conference talent.

All in all, that leaves about 20 teams or so that have a legitimate shot to go deep in the tournament. Of course, that hasn't stopped the lesser schools from making it to the Final 4 in the past 5 years. So, how do we sort this out? The short answer is that we can't sort it out yet. As teams begin to make a run or run out of steam, we will have a better idea as the final two weeks of the regular season wind down.

Right now, all we can do is watch the dreaded Bubble and see which teams are likely to be in or out. There will be 32 automatic bids for the conference champions, which leaves 36 At Large births into the Big Dance. Let's take a way-too-early look at the number of teams that will make it from each conference:

American Athletic Conference: 5 teams - Louisville, Cincinnati, Uconn, Memphis, SMU

A10 Conference: 4 teams - Saint Louis, Umass and two other teams TBD (VCU, George Washington, St. Joseph, Richmond, Dayton)

ACC: 5 teams - Syracuse, Duke, Virgina, UNC and one TBD (Pittsburgh or Florida State)

Big 12: 6 teams - Kansas, Iowa State, Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas State and one TBD (Baylor or Oklahoma State)

Big East: 4 teams - Villanova, Creighton and two other teams TBD (St. John's, Xavier, Georgetown, Providence)

Big Ten: 6 teams - Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio State and one TBD (Nebraska or Minnesota)

Mountain West: 2 teams - San Diego State and New Mexcio

Pac 12: 5 teams - Arizona, UCLA, Colorado and two other teams TBD (Arizona State, Oregon, Stanford, California)

SEC: 3 teams - Florida, Kentucky and one TBD (Missouri or Tennessee)

Other Conferences: 1 team has a lock - Wichita State. All other teams have to make sure that they win their tournaments to guarantee themselves a spot.

I have intentionally left myself a little bit short on the number of At-Large bids filled. If you take the worst case scenario like this, there are 31 of the 36 At-Large bids filled. That leaves 5 spots to be claimed by the various conferences. With a complete lack of mid-Majors with secured bids, it is unlikely that many of these spots will be lost in the conference tournaments. The lone exceptions would be if Wichita State lost in their conference tournament or if Gonzaga lost in the finals of the WCC. Of course, you have to also be aware of a dark horse candidate winning one of the major conferences (particularly the ACC, Mountain West, or the SEC).

If you would like to see the current NCAA Championship odds, you can find them at the allpro NCAA lines. Right now, only Nostradamus would be able to pick correctly out of the complete mess that is out there.