"I've seen a few articles about possibly eliminating the automatic bid for these teams winning their conference tourneys (Jay Bilas, I'm looking at you). I couldn't disagree more. The opportunity for teams like VCU, George Mason, Bucknell, Vermont, etc. to make a big splash in the tourney and knock off a big team is the most exciting part of the NCAA tournament. I really don't care if a team like USF, NC State, Northwestern is better than a team like Davidson. The opportunity for those teams to make it into the tourney and make a big splash gives us so much more interesting college basketball to watch, and it's really what makes championship week so enjoyable. " Here's the list of teams Wisconsin has lost to in the tourney in the last five years: Butler Cornell Xavier Davidson UNLV UW hasn't lost to a "power conference" team in the tourney since 2006 (Arizona - if you can even call the Pac-10 a "power conference" in basketball anymore). The success of teams like Butler, VCU, George Mason, Davidson, Cornell, Bucknell, and others is proof that they belong in the tourney just as much as any .500 team from a Big Six conference. They can't rack up the strength of schedule because they don't have RPI top 50 teams in their conference that they play by default, and teams don't want to play them in non-conference for fear of losing. I'm pretty sure those teams could rack up 9 wins in a conference with Penn State/Nebraska/Illinois/Minnesota/Northwestern/Iowa or De Paul/Providence/Villanova/St. Johns/Rutgers/Seton Hall/South Florida. They would probably be 14-4 in the Pac 10.