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Welcome to the final regular installment of the Small Conference Game of the Day.  While a few conferences will continue their regular season play into Sunday, March 4, those conferences are the ACC, SEC, Big Ten and Pac-12…none of which (other than arguably the Pac-12) qualify as small or mid-major conferences.

For today’s final regular installment, we are going to actually feature three games.  The first two come, of course, from the Ivy League.  Harvard, after pulling out an overtime win last night at Columbia, travels to Cornell (7pm, espn3) while the Penn Quakers host Yale.  The automatic bid can be clinched by Harvard tonight with a victory AND a loss by Penn.  If both teams win or both teams lose, then Penn would need to beat Princeton Tuesday night to force a one game playoff next weekend.  If Penn wins and Harvard loses, Penn would need to beat Princeton on Tuesday night to clinch the bid, while a loss there would force a one game playoff as well.

It is somewhat fitting that Cornell and Princeton, while both eliminated from being able to win the bid, will play a role in determining whether or not Harvard makes the NCAA tournament.  In the past 25+ years, only three teams from the Ivy League have made the Big Dance: Penn, Princeton and Cornell.  In fact, if Harvard is able to make the tournament this year, they will break the longest streak of missing the field for a team that has been in at least one NCAA tournament before.  Their last bid was in 1946!  (and on a side note, they will hand that title off to conference-mate Dartmouth who was last in the field in 1959).

Of course, I mentioned that there were three games that I was featuring tonight.  While the two games in the Ivy are the focus, it is hard to pass up a regular season game that will result in the winner’s season continuing and the loser going home.  The third game for today comes from the Southland Conference where Sam Houston State heads to San Marcos, Texas to take on Texas State.  Only the top 8 teams, regardless of division, qualify for the Southland tournament.  Seven spots in their field have been clinched, but the eighth will be awarded to today’s winner.  As such, today’s game is a de facto playoff game, and worthy of mention in this column as well.

We are nearing the end of the regular season which will bring with it the end of the Small Conference Game of the Night, but the games have not ended yet. As was the case both Friday and Saturday last week, there are prime choices from the Ivy League for this feature, with co-leaders (in the loss column) Harvard and Penn both in action. However, I am going to pass on both of those games, as well as the very tempting “completely meaningless” game between Dartmouth and Cornell, and instead turn to the Mid-American Conference.

Heading into last weekend, Akron looked like a team that could at least merit some at-large consideration if they fell in the conference tournament finals. They then went out on national television Sunday night and had Ohio University take them to the woodshed in an 81-65 loss that wasn’t even that close. To make things wilder in the MAC, Ohio U then when to Kent State on Wednesday night and lost 68-61 in a game that was not that close either. So, of course, tonight we have Akron traveling to Kent State to wrap up both of their regular seasons (7pm, ESPN2). Based on this past week’s results, Kent State should win this game by about 200 points…though I have a feeling it will be a lot more competitive than that.

With a win tonight, Akron clinches outright the MAC regular season championship. They can also get it with a Buffalo loss on Saturday to Bowling Green. The game may be even bigger for Kent State though, as the Golden Flashes are currently tied for third in the conference with Ohio U, a game ahead of Eastern Michigan and Bowling Green. The conference gives double byes into the quarterfinals for seeds 3 and 4 (and triple byes into the semifinals for the top 2 teams). A win tonight will guarantee Kent State no worse than fourth place and let them avoid two additional games just to get to the quarterfinal round. The byes could be huge in the MAC this year, as Akron, Buffalo, Ohio, and Kent State are all talented enough to win the tournament, and Bowling Green is not far behind those four as a possible dark horse candidate.

COMING TOMORROW: The final regular installment for the 2011-12 season of the Small Conference Game of the Night.