Kansas

Duke

Kansas

Ohio State

Pittsburgh

Few people thought it could be done: winning five games in five days had never happened in the history of conference tournaments, and no team in the history of the expanded Big East Championship had gone from playing on Tuesday to the tile game. That all changed when Preston Knowles' attempt to tie the game at the buzzer hit the back iron, giving Connecticut the 69-66 win and their seventh Big East Championship title (first since 2004). MVP Kemba Walker scored 19 points, making the game-winning play on an assist after scoring a tournament-record 130 points through five games.

The day before Selection Sunday is finally here, which means that a number of conferences will determine their winners throughout the course of the day. Thirteen automatic bids are up for grabs and a 14th, the battle between South Dakota and North Dakota in the Great West, will be for an automatic bid in the College Insider Tournament. The Big 12 and Big East title games may receive a great deal of attention (and rightfully so), but the first meeting between teams with 30 victories will take place in the Mountain West final.

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.

Just two games remain for teams in the middle of the Big East pack to separate themselves and earn a first round bye, a fact that makes the game between Connecticut (21-7, 9-7) and West Virginia (18-10, 9-7) all the more important to both. Kemba Walker's been the player whose received the lion's share of the attention for the Huskies and rightfully so as he's one of the top candidates for Big East Player of the Year.