The tourny begins Thursday evening with the two play-in games. All games can be seen on FSN and times given are Central. The Championship game on Sunday will be seen on CBS.

Playing for the opportunity to face Wichita will be:

8 Indiana State VS 9 Southern Illinois (6:05 tip) - Both teams are capable of losing this one. ISUb has the better perimeter play, SIU and the better interior play. I'm not sure either really matches up all that well with Wichita. But this is a difficult game to predict. Seck and Daniels should dominate the paint.

Prediction - SIU by 3

Playing for the opportunity to face Creighton will be:

7 Drake VS 10 Bradley (8:35 tip) - Walt Lemon Jr. has been playing pretty well for BU, but Drake has two too many weapons for BU to contain. Simons and Rice should take care of business and they could give CU a run for their money on Friday.

Prediction - Drake by 12

Games on Friday will begin at Noon.

Winner of 8/9 VS 1 Wichita State (12:05 tip) - It really shouldn't matter who wins between SIU and ISUb, Wichita should take care of business. If Ragland is feeling better and Stutz ankle isn't too bad, then Wichita runs away with this game. If either are still down, Wichita runs away with this game.

Prediction - Wichita by 18

4 Illinois State VS 5 Northern Iowa (2:35 tip) - This could be a pretty good game. ISU hasn't played well on the road, but neither has UNI. So I'm not sure what a site like this means to either of them. Both teams have some young talent. Two matchups intrigue me in this one. FR Seth Tuttle angainst JR Jackie Carmichael and JR Anthony James against FR Nic Moore. Sadly I'll be at work and unable to watch this one.

Prediction - ISU by 4

Winner of 7/10 VS 2 Creighton (6:05 tip) - If Bradley manages a win, they get run out of the gym here. If Drake wins, it could be a good game. Creighton is not a good defensive team. It may be a stretch to calle them an average defensive team. But boy can they shoot. Drake will play some D and have some players that CU will have to stop in Rice and Simons.

Prediction - CU by 20 (BU) or 4 (DU)

3 Evansville VS 6 Missouri State (8:35 tip) - This may depend on if Weems has officially checked out like he did the last couple weeks of the season or if he's prepared to try and make a run at his last chance of an NCAA Tournament. If he shows up and ready, they could pull this one off. UE though has a couple of shooters and they're a scrappy bunch. The type of team that isn't going to win a conference, but is capable of pulling off an upset at any point.

Prediction - Evansville by 7 (Weems cries)

Winners will play Saturday at 1:35 and 4:05 with the Championship Game on CBS at 1:05 Sunday.

If I were to predict the entire tournament right now, I'd go on to have Wichita defeating Illinois State by 15 on Saturday and Evansville knocking off Creighton by 2. Then in the Sunday Finale I'd have Wichita winning by 20. Nobody can match the depth of Wichita and I think that'll play a huge factor by Sunday afternoon.

I'll try to keep this thread updated as well as possible, but I'm not online all that much on the weekends normally.

Arch Madness begins tomorrow night. I'm hoping I'll be able to catch a few updates on the phone while I'm in class. The 8/9 game is semi intriguing. At least in the sense that it could be a decent game. I wouldn't expect the same out of the 7/10 matchup.

By all accounts, the first game of the night was brutal to watch. A horrible SIU team somehow hung around with the "mighty" Trees of ISUb until the final media timeout. Final score was 66-51. From reports, the most exciting thing about this game was the ISUb student section losing about 10% of the group when one dumb kid decided after their "dominating" victory, to start running his mouth and being obscene towards the Wichita section. The game absolutely sucked and if ISUb plays like that today, they'll get run right out of the gym.

I haven't recieved any reports about the Drake/Bradley game. Drake won 65-49 as expected.

So at noon today is Wichita against ISUb. That game will be followed by Illinois State and UNI. The second session starts with Creighton and Drake and followed by Evansville and Missouri State. All games on FSN.

Wichita had a nice warmup contest with ISUb this afternoon. They built a 21 point halftime lead and finished the Trees off with ease winning 72-48. They'll play ISU tomorrow after the Redbirds defeated UNI in a show of how not to shoot the ball, 54-42.

Creighton will face Drake this evening, followed by Missouri State and Evansville. Both games could be good ones.

Creighton was able to get passed Drake as the Bulldogs shot about 6% from deep. An average game from Drake would have led to a win. In the 2nd game, Weems showed again that he's given up on the season and Evansville moved on to take on Creighton in the 2nd game this afternoon.

I still don't see any reason why Wichita doesn't win easily in the 130 game. Creighton may be in for another fight as the Aces are scrappy and have a couple of guys capable of putting points on the board in large numbers. Don't be surprised to see an upset in the 2nd game.

Wichita was able to overcome the one sided officiating on Friday, but not on Saturday. Wichita was mugged repeatedly in the paint and got very few calls. On the other end, Wilkins and Carmichael were allowed to abuse whoever they wanted. ISU is a very good team, but they had some help in their one point victory. Including a horrid call against Williams when Brown repeatedly used his shoulder to push him around and did so 4 or 5 times before doing so on the shot. Of course on the shot, Williams got whistled for body contact.....

Creighton, beloved by the Valley, continues to get call after call while getting away with attempted murder. At least attempted rape. They blew out Evansville as Evansville couldn't hit anything.

If both teams get away with what they got away with yesterday, it's going to be the ugliest, most physical game you've ever seen with about 7 total free-throws attempted. I'm actually kind of glad that I'm planning on grocery shopping during the game so I won't have to watch the brutality. But my guess would be that ISU will get whistled for three times as much as they did yesterday while not being near as physical and the Valley will make sure their darling Creighton wins.