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In the latest interview in his new "Big Dance" series, CHN writer Jon Teitel spent some time with UNC Asheville head coach Eddie Biedenbach. Coach Biedenbach's Bulldogs won the Big South Tournament last week, winning all three games by double-digit margins including the final at regular season champion Coastal Carolina. Coach Biedenbach has plenty of experience coaching in the NCAA Tournament as both an assistant and a head coach, and in 2003 his Bulldogs made their most recent appearance in the tournament.

By this time next Sunday there will be more than 20 teams guaranteed inclusion in the 2011 NCAA Tournament and the first three tickets were punched on Saturday. UNC Asheville (Big South), Belmont (Atlantic Sun) and Morehead State (Ohio Valley) all won their conference tournament finals while Princeton (Ivy) missed out on a chance to join the fun with their loss at Harvard. Now the Tigers need to beat rival Penn at the Palestra to forge a tie atop the standings, forcing a one-game playoff with Harvard for the Ancient Eight's automatic bid.

With three NCAA Tournament tickets assured of being punched (that number becomes four if Princeton wins at Harvard in a crucial Ivy League tilt), it makes sense to touch on each of those games as opposed to the usual daily preview. The title game in the Atlantic Sun provides a matchup of the prohibitive favorite taking on the underdog, a storyline that usually doesn't come into play for another two weeks.

UNC-Asheville

Radford

VMI

Winthrop

Other (Gardner-Webb, Liberty, etc)

This is the first in a series of conference tournament previews I’ll be doing for CollegeHoops.net, in which I run down all the teams involved, giving a breif statistical review and picking out some of the key players, and presenting the log5 projections, using in-conference offensive and defensive efficiency.The basic log5 methodology comes from Bill James, and this is an area Ken Pomeroy has looke

#8 High Point Panthers (9-20, 4-14 Big South) at #1 Radford (18-11, 15-3 Big South), 7:00pm ? Live Video: Big South EDGE on www.BigSouthSports.com

Editor's Early Preview (12/15):

For Duke, its Final Four or bust this season.. and UNCA is just a small little pebble on their path to the postseason. The Bulldogs lost a ton of talent in the off-season and are in serious rebuilding mode. This will be blow out city.

Full GameNight preview coming soon!