[Baez87]

As I recall, the NCAA requires each conference to host an end-of-the-year tourney. I don’t think that Tara was too fond of the idea at first, but she is a realist and seems to have accepted it. It’s a good marketing tool to inspire fan interest going into the NCAA sixty-four team tournament, and it gives all teams in all conferences reason to hope, since the winner of the tournament receives an automatic bid to the tournament. It rarely happens, but once in a great while a Cinderella Team emerges who had no chance to go to the tournament, yet earns a birth by winning it all at a conference tourney. This was the case in 2014 when Cynthia Cooper-Dyke's USC women's basketball team won the PAC-12 Tournament (can anyone forget that postgame Cooper Dance?) and received an automatic birth to the NCAA Finals (they lost in the first round to St. John's).

[Baez87]

As I recall, the NCAA requires each conference to host an end-of-the-year tourney. I don’t think that Tara was too fond of the idea at first, but she is a realist and seems to have accepted it. It’s a good marketing tool to inspire fan interest going into the NCAA sixty-four team tournament, and it gives all teams in all conferences reason to hope, since the winner of the tournament receives an automatic bid to the tournament. It rarely happens, but once in a great while a Cinderella Team emerges who had no chance to go to the tournament, yet earns a birth by winning it all at a conference tourney. This was the case in 2014 when Cynthia Cooper-Dyke's USC women's basketball team won the PAC-12 Tournament (can anyone forget that postgame Cooper Dance?) and received an automatic birth to the NCAA Finals (they lost in the first round to St. John's).