8 Cinderella teams to watch in the conference tournaments

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Mar 23, 2014; St. Louis, MO, USA; Kentucky Wildcats celebrate as the defeat the Wichita State Shockers 78-76 in the third round of the 2014 NCAA Men /

It’s pre-March Madness now—also known as Conference Tournament time!

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As crazy as the NCAA Tournament is—and we all know it is—conference tourneys are equally nuts. These teams know each other so well that you can never count anyone out (except maybe Rutgers this year) and anything can happen.

As it stands, some of the mid-major conferences have seen some upsets. In the MAAC, Saint Peter’s sent Rider—an NCAA hopeful—packing with a huge upset. The Ivy League—which is pretty much its own season-long tournament—has seen a battle between Harvard and Yale which now will be settled in a one-game playoff. The team which wins gets the automatic bid for the NCAA, and this has only happened nine times in the league’s history (all previous ones involved Princeton, the third place team in the Ivy League this season).

So now we get to the big conferences. The Big Ten, SEC, Pac-12, Big East, Big12, AAC, A-10 and the ACC all kicks things off this week and have a huge impact on the NCAA brackets which are coming soon.

We all know the favorites—Wisconsin, Villanova, Kentucky. But who might surprise us? Which teams could be the Cinderella story for this year’s conference tournaments?

We have our eight selections. Some of them are long-shots while others are only Cinderellas because of situation.

All of them have a puncher’s chance of making some noise in the next week.

We’re going to explain why these teams have a shot and then, because we know sometimes the glass slipper gets lost, we’re going to tell you why it’s not going to happen. It will be fun to see who we’re right on (if anyone) and who we miss on (most of them). And it’s a good tune-up for the NCAA brackets we’ll have in just a few weeks. Because everyone is picking Kentucky—winning your pool might come down to knowing one of the following teams.

Next: Seton Hall – Big East