Iowa and Houston put the wraps on college basketball's conference tournament season Sunday by winning the Big Ten and AAC tournaments, respectively. As usual, the conference tournaments featured dramatic finishes and Cinderella stories as teams around the country jockeyed for automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament.
While the Hawkeyes and Cougars were destined to receive at-large bids to the Big Dance even if they had lost Sunday, many of the conference tournament champions needed automatic bids to go dancing. Among those in that category was Yale, which won the Ivy League Tournament on Sunday by knocking off Princeton 66-64. The Bulldogs will be going dancing for the third time in the last seven years and looking to pull another upset after it beat Baylor in the 2016 NCAA Tournament as a No. 12 seed.
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The biggest splash on Sunday came in the Atlantic 10, however, where No. 6 seed Richmond emerged as a surprise conference tournament winner. The Spiders knocked off Davidson 64-62 to become a likely NCAA Tournament bid thief. It will be Richmond's first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2011. Among the other big winners on Sunday was Tennessee, which claimed its first SEC Tournament title since 1979 with a 65-50 win over Texas A&M.
Here is the full rundown of which teams secured automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament.
Sunday's conference championship games
Ivy League
(2) Yale 66, (1) Princeton 64 | Recap
Atlantic 10
(6) Richmond 64, (1) Davidson 62 | Recap
SEC
(2) Tennessee 65, (8) Texas A&M 50 | Recap
AAC
(1) Houston 71, (3) Memphis 53 | ESPN -- Recap
Big Ten
(5) Iowa 75, (3) Purdue 66 | CBS -- Recap
2022 conference tournament schedules, champions
| Conference | Tournament site | Dates (Final TV) | 2022 Champion |
| AAC | Fort Worth, Texas | March 10-13 (ESPN) | Houston (29-5) |
| ACC | Brooklyn, N.Y. | March 8-12 (ESPN) | Virginia Tech (23-12) |
| America East | Campus sites | March 6, 9 & 12 (ESPN2) | Vermont (28-5) |
| Atlantic 10 | Washington D.C. | March 9-13 (CBSSN) | Richmond (23-12) |
| ASUN | Campus sites | March 1, 3, 5 & 8 (ESPN) | Bellarmine (20-13) - x |
| Big East | New York | March 9-12 (Fox) | Villanova (26-7) |
| Big Sky | Boise, Idaho | March 9-12 (ESPNU) | Montana State (27-7) |
| Big South | Charlotte, N.C. | March 2, 4-6 (ESPN2) | Longwood (26-6) |
| Big Ten | Indianapolis | March 9-13 (CBS) | Iowa (26-9) |
| Big 12 | Kansas City | March 9-12 (ESPN) | Kansas (28-6) |
| Big West | Henderson, Nev. | March 8, 10-12 (ESPN2) | Cal St. Fullerton (21-10) |
| Colonial | Washington D.C. | March 5-8 (CBSSN) | Delaware (22-12) |
| Conference USA | Frisco, Texas | March 8-12 (CBSSN) | UAB (27-7) |
| Horizon League | Indianapolis | March 1, 3, 7 & 8 (ESPN) | Wright State (21-13) |
| Ivy League | Cambridge, Mass. | March 12-13 (ESPN2) | Yale (19-11) |
| MAAC | Atlantic City, N.J. | March 8-12 (ESPNU) | Saint Peter's (19-11) |
| MAC | Cleveland | March 10-12 (ESPN2) | Akron (24-9) |
| MEAC | Norfolk, Va. | March 9-12 (ESPN2) | Norfolk State (24-6) |
| Missouri Valley | St. Louis | March 3-6 (CBS) | Loyola-Chicago (25-7) |
| Mountain West | Las Vegas | March 9-12 (CBS) | Boise State (27-7) |
| Northeast | Campus sites | Feb. 28, March 2, 5 & 8 (ESPN) | Bryant (22-9) |
| Ohio Valley | Evansville, Ind. | March 2-5 (ESPN2) | Murray State (30-2) |
| Pac-12 | Las Vegas | March 9-12 (Fox) | Arizona (30-3) |
| Patriot | Campus sites | March 1, 3, 6 & 9 (CBSSN) | Colgate (23-11) |
| SEC | Tampa, Florida | March 9-13 (ESPN) | Tennessee (26-7) |
| Southern | Asheville, N.C | March 4-7 (ESPN) | Chattanooga (27-7) |
| Southland | Katy, Texas | March 9-12 (ESPN2) | Texas A&M-CC (22-11) |
| Summit | Sioux Falls, S.D. | March 5-8 (ESPN2) | S. Dakota State (30--4) |
| Sun Belt | Pensacola, Fla. | March 3, 5-7 (ESPN2) | Georgia State (18-10) |
| SWAC | Birmingham, Ala. | March 9-12 (ESPNU) | Texas Southern (18-12) |
| WAC | Las Vegas | March 8-12 (ESPNU) | New Mexico State (26-6) |
| West Coast | Las Vegas | March 3-5 & 7-8 (ESPN) | Gonzaga (26-3) |
x - Bellarmine is ineligible for the NCAA Tournament so ASUN regular season champion Jacksonville State is awarded the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
