It has been a particularly fun year of college basketball for anyone whose team isn’t in the ACC. The landscape is changing under the sport’s feet as NIL pushes older coaches who aren’t willing to adapt out and pulls players back for as many years as they can muster eligibility. The way players get paid is far from perfect and desperately needs some legitimate organization which has had many unintended consequences. As Rick Pitino admitted he can’t even recruit kids out of high school in this landscape. How can he expect an eighteen year old to contribute on a title winning team in a world where players are in the NCAA till they’re twenty-three if not older, though I’d imagine John Sheyer and Cooper Flagg would beg to differ. This landscape has created a market where smaller teams can recruit better talent and develop it in house for several years, praying that they’ll stay home and not get poached when success eventually comes. For better or worse it keeps the sport diverse, as smaller teams have to get crafty to compete with the big boys, making the David vs Goliath upsets all that much more sweet. We have also seen however that spending cash isn’t a surefire way to succeed and that attention to roster building and play style continues to be just as important for the most cash rich in the sport as the two largest NIL spenders of the season, Kansas State and Indiana, both did not make the tournament. College basketball is changing and rapidly getting more professionalized, but it is in a weirdly nice spot at the moment. It feels like at least a dozen different teams could win the tournament and feel like deserving champions. Its gonna be a fun couple of weeks. Below are five things to look out for as you watch the Madness unfold.
- SEC Dominates the field with a record fourteen entrants to the tournament
The SEC has been one of the most impressive top to bottom conferences that the NCAA has ever seen this season with all but two teams making the tournament field. It’s a whole lot cheaper for these schools and their deep pocketed donors to field a decent basketball team than it is a football team, so it isn’t entirely surprising that the league has become dominant in the NIL era, but it is still bizarre to see two teams go 6-12 in their conference and still make the field. The conference has also had four of the top five to ten teams in the country all season with the #1 overall seed Auburn, the SEC Tournament Champion Florida Gators, and the damn near equally impressive squads from Alabama and Tennessee. Can the league with 20% of the tournament field convert that into their first title since Callipari led Kentucky to the promised land in 2012? Florida has become such a hot pick for the NCAA title after dominating their conference tournament that they’ve become a “You Don’t Know Ball If You Pick Them” team for real CBB sickos/junkies, but I’d say they have the best shot of any of those four teams. Auburn might be the most athletic but they are limping into the tournament coming off several tough in conference losses and are a tad more erratic than you can get away with being in March. Chad Baker-Mazara is one of the best players in the country but you can see him getting an early technical foul against Creighton or UC San Diego and it killing the War Eagle momentum. I wouldn’t rely on Tennessee to go deep, they’re good but not nearly as good as they were last year with Dalton Knecht. Alabama however I could see replicating their recent March success and make a lil run. Then again they did barely scrape by in the majority of their games as they went on their last Final Four run. In a way the conference is doomed where a few of their middle of the pack teams will inevitably fall early and get roasted for it. I don’t think the SEC needs to win a title to prove they really are the big boy conference, but it would legitimately be embarrassing if they don’t get at least one team into the Final Four.
- Is The Big East St. John’s league or does UConn have another run in them?
After winning the last two NCAA titles Dan Hurley’s UConn Huskies has a tougher year than expected. They relied heavily on older talent who helped lead them to their last title like Alex Karaban and Solo Ball, both of whom have been good but not great. While they have got a ton of production out of one and done freshman phenom Liam McNeely, their highly touted St. Mary’s transfer Aidan Mahaney has not been able to crack UConn’s rotation, struggling to score like he did back for the Gaels. Needless to say Dan Hurley has been absolutely losing his mind about it on the sidelines. Meanwhile Rick Pitino put together the first St. John’s Big East conference tournament title since 2000 and their first Big East regular season title since 1992. It is a particularly heartfelt accomplishment for the Red Storm who lost the most storied coach in program history, Lou Carneseca, at the end of November. In the time since they’ve honored his legacy by playing like one of the best teams in the country. This is the sixth different basketball team Pitino has won a conference tournament with, it’s the kind of year that has already cemented his legacy as one of the five best coaches in college basketball history. That being said, if his boys don’t make a run this month he has already committed to jumping into the East River, so the story better not end here. The Johnnies can’t score to save their lives but are the second best defensive team in the country behind Houston and tend to wear teams down and find their shot later in the game. Does either have a Final Four run in them? Creighton and Marquette while less interesting stories than the other two Big East teams could also sneak past people. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Blue Jays beat Auburn or for the Golden Eagles to sneak past Michigan State. Xavier has been playing good ball lately too, but they’re mostly lucky that North Carolina made the tournament or more people would be pissed they did. Speaking of which..
- Is Duke vs UNC Chapel Hill still a rivalry worth respecting?
I would say yes it is still a great rivalry personally, particularly seeing as the television ratings for the most recent game between the two hit three million. However the Blue Devils so thoroughly dominated their Tobacco Road rivals this year that many pundits and burner accounts asked if it’s over for the Tar Heels for good. Luckily for them their Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham was the chair of the board of people who decide who makes the tournament (yes, seriously) so they are limping in as an undeserving eleven seed. I could ironically see them making a little run to the Sweet Sixteen too, forcing the Tar Heels to stick with Hubert Davis a little longer than most fans want to like the NC State Wolfpack had to when Kevin Keattes and DJ Burns made their miracle Final Four run last season. Everyone in America will be rooting for their downfall, which is a particularly funny fate for the Tar Heels. Meanwhile the Blue Devils and Cooper Flagg are the class of the NCAA, one of the deepest and most dominant teams in the country. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a bracket that doesn’t have the Blue Devils in the Final Four if not farther, though that could be complicated if Cooper Flagg doesn’t come back from his conference tournament injury at full strength. Funniest scenario is Duke somehow losing to say Oregon in the Sweet Sixteen and UNC having the bracket fall their way with a couple choice upsets, but I’d honestly be shocked if Sheyer and the Blue Devils didn’t make a deep run in this tournament.
- What is going on with this seeding?
UNC Chapel Hill making the field over West Virginia was far from the only controversy the bracket committee faced. People were so shocked that Louisville got an eight seed and that Memphis got seeded fifth that there is a legitimate conspiracy with several backers that the committee flat out screwed up and put the two teams in the wrong spots. NCAA Basketball statistician Evan Miyakawa went as far to say that all the eight seeds this year are better than the five seeds this year. As mentioned previously the committee is made up of school Athletic Directors, Presidents, and members of the NCAA who are admittedly not watching all the games. They clearly do not have a passion for bracket making and do it to maintain their control over the field. It’d be great if they’d just hand over the reins to the bracketologists who watch all the games and do this for a living, but the NCAA is unsurprisingly a gerontocracy. The Gonzaga Bulldogs are arguably the most underseeded team in NCAA history. Where many advanced statistical models have them playing as one of the best ten teams in the country, the committee has them as an eight seed. Tough draw for one seed Houston who’ll probably have to face them in the second round.
- Yes that’s all fun but I am here for the upsets
While NIL dollars are turning the SEC into a super conference and rapidly turning NCAA basketball into semi-pro basketball, it has also made it so any scrappy school with a bored multi-millionaire alum can grab themselves a few good players and put a decent team together. While I think the bracket will look relatively chalky come Elite Eight and Final Four, don’t be surprised to see a double-digit seed showdown or two in the second round, like #13 Yale vs #12 UC San Diego or #11 Drake vs #14 UNC Wilmington. Everyone and their grandmother has #12 McNeese vs #13 High Point in the second round which makes me feel like Purdue and Clemson may win their days, but who knows this could be the reverse mush that Will Wade’s Bayou Bandits and Alan Huss’ Panthers needed. If any double digit seed could make a run it’d be the winner of that potential UC San Diego vs Yale match up. It’d be particularly fun to get a rematch of Yale vs Auburn in the Sweet Sixteen to see if brain can conquer brawn once again. That being said the funniest outcome, and thus most likely, would be UNC Chapel Hill going on that silencing miracle run. As an NC State Wolfpack diehard it is legitimately keeping me up at night. Happy March! Enjoy the madness.
