Big Days, Big Games

It's that time of year, folks.

Two weeks ago I was at swimming and diving championships...

One week ago I was at track and field championships...

Today I'm at the beginning of the basketball championships.

Four Big South teams have home games tonight: Radford (top seed, hosting High Point), VMI (against Coastal Carolina), Liberty (facing Gardner-Webb), and UNC Asheville (taking on Winthrop). Yes, it's the Advance Auto Parts Big South Men's Basketball Championship--with quarterfinals at the top four seeds...the semifinals will be at Radford Thursday (even if RU gets upset tonight), with the final game Saturday at the higher remaining seed of the two surviving teams.

I'm in Lynchburg, Virginia, for the LU-GWU showdown. As part of my job here as the Big South Conference rep, I had the privilege of handing the All-Conference awards to the deserving players from these two teams after their respective shootarounds, including two of the major individual honors: Scholar-Athlete of the Year (Gardner-Webb's Aaron Linn) and Freshman of the Year (Liberty's Seth Curry--the highest scoring freshman in the history of the Big South Conference). Other awards included First and Second team All-Conference, All-Freshman team, and All-Academic team--you can see the full lists for all the winners at BigSouthSports.com.

By the way, the other major individual awards (given at the appropriate sites today) included Player of the Year (Artsiom Parakhouski of Radford), Defensive Player of the Year (Mantoris Robinson of Winthrop), and Coach of the Year (Radford's Brad Greenberg).

Read the tournament preview notebook HERE.

It's always fun to see events come together, particularly one with weight to it--win and advance, lose and the season's done. Good luck to all the teams, should be fun tonight!