Down the stretch they come.
If you don't think regular-season conference titles mean anything in college basketball, then I'm afraid you're not watching. Maybe you're watching some other sport instead of college basketball because someone misinformed you.
Yes, the conference tournaments are a rich plumb, particularly at the mid- and low-major levels, because of the automatic bid a tourney title confers. But a regular-season title is a nod to consistent excellence over the course of five months. That resonates long after a tournament title disappears, particularly in power conferences where an automatic bid tends to be essentially meaningless among the top half of the competitors, while at-large bids are largely decided in the regular season.