We’ve somehow made it to Friday of Championship Week with two Philadelphia area schools still alive in their respective conference tournaments.

The St. Joseph’s Hawks are a semifinalist in the chaotic Atlantic 10, where the top three seeds were eliminated on Thursday. The Temple Owls won two games in two days to reach the American Athletic Conference quarterfinals.

I don’t think anyone, even the biggest fan boys of their respective schools (Sup, Kyle Pagan), expected either team to still be alive.

Temple carries much longer odds to win the AAC than St. Joe’s does the A-10. The Owls have the longest odds of any remaining team in the AAC at DraftKings at +7000. They’ve impressively gone 6-2 in their last eight games, but only one of those wins, Thursday’s triumph over banged-up SMU, came against a top-eight conference team.

Temple is a seven-point underdog against Charlotte in the late tipoff in Fort Worth on Friday. KenPom projects Charlotte’s margin of victory to be five points, so there’s at least a glimmer of hope for the Owls to keep the Cinderella story alive for one more day, but I don’t think they advance past the semifinals.

Florida Atlantic is in a different stratosphere from Temple, and even though those Owls don’t need the AAC’s automatic bid, they would probably beat the Philly-based Owls by double digits, especially when you consider it would be Temple’s fourth game in four days.

Regardless, it’s a nice finish to the season in Adam Fisher’s first season. There’s at least some hope things turn around there.

As for St. Joe’s, there’s a real opportunity to be the A-10 bid stealer. The Hawks are +310 to win the A-10 tournament at Pennsylvania sportsbooks and New Jersey sportsbooks.

The Hawks face the highest seed left in the bracket, No. 4 VCU, but because of the day off between the quarterfinals and semifinals, they’ll be fully rested for the clash with the Rams.

(It’s bullshit that the A-10 scheduled this day off. True conference tournaments should not have an off day in the middle.  The A-10 killed all the buzz around it this year because of all the upsets that happened on Thursday. I get that it wants to have the Sunday final, but adjust your schedule accordingly then). 

St. Joe’s only lost to VCU by four points on February 25th. The Rams lost four of six to close the regular season and struggled with Fordham in the second round. As we’ve seen so far in Brooklyn, no favorite is safe.

St. Bonaventure and Duquesne play in the other A-10 semifinal. The Hawks split the regular-season series with Duquesne and lost by 19 to the Bonnies. Despite that, the Bonnies may be the preferred final opponent for St. Joe’s since Duquesne is 8-1 in its last nine games.

St. Joe’s is essentially playing with house money, and it probably should just embrace the underdog role this weekend in Brooklyn since it will be the dog in any potential matchup.