And when the games are done, they’re going downtown and having fun. For the Big East, the venue is New York city and Madison Square Garden – not a bad prelude to spring break for a kid from Syracuse or South Bend.

Like the NCAA tournament, if you lose, you’re out. But the stakes are double for the lower seeds. For them, making the NCAA’s is enough. But to get there, they have to win their conference tournament, climbing over teams that are supposed to be better than them along the way.

Win the conference tournament or at least get to the finals, and a team on the bubble – think Ohio State – can go dancing. Lose early and go home.

The top seeds, whose tickets to the dance are already punched, have a lot at stake, too. For them, winning the conference can nail down a No. 1 or 2 seed in the country. Losing early can drop them to a second or third.

And then there are those bragging rights. As much as Duke and North Carolina boast about their national titles, in the ACC they’re judged by how many times they’ve won what their fans consider to be the greatest basketball conference in the country.

In a lot of ways, there’s nothing more important than that conference tournament trophy. It’s so much basketball crammed into such a short time, so much intensity with so much riding on every pass, every shot, every possession, every minute. And it’s all so intensely personal.

Special feature Big Dance's best We project the teams headed for the NCAA tournament's Sweet 16. Is yours on the list? NBCSports.com

If you’ve never been to the second day of a conference tournament – four games consuming the afternoon and evening and all the top teams putting it on the line – you haven’t lived. Put it on your list of things you have to do, and then do it. If you want the whole experience, get a room in town and watch the whole thing, but just make sure you can take Monday off, because, take my word, going to work is not going to be an option.

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