It’s the middle of March, meaning the NCAA basketball tournament is set to get underway. March Madness always has something special in store, and this season ought to be no different.
For starters, let’s get the biggest thing out of the way. Millions of people, including me, fully invest themselves in the art of “Bracketology” — trying to pick every game correctly, outside of the silly play-in games. Getting them all right is a one-in-nine quintillion chance, and yet, it’s something that many people seem to think they can do.
This year, however, Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans, and Warren Buffett are teaming up to offer $1 billion — yes, you read that right — to anyone who can trump the odds. Given NSU’s relatively high tuition, not to mention the horrific pricing at the bookstore, it might not be a bad idea to have a crack at it.
Of course, picking the “favorite” to win might be a reasonable strategy to try, but it just never works that way. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the little guys step up big in the tourney. We could go back to 2006 and George Mason’s fairy-tale run, but let’s take 2010 as the best example. That year, 14-seed Ohio stunned the famed Georgetown in the first round; Northern Iowa, a nine-seed, took down top overall seed Kansas in the second round; 12-seed Cornell dumped perennial powers Wisconsin out at the same stage; and relative unknowns Butler, a five-seed, were inches away from beating the almighty Duke in the title game.
To make it even better, the Bulldogs made it back to the title game for a second consecutive season in 2011, this time doing it as an eight-seed. They fell flat in the end, losing out to Connecticut, but their semifinal game was interesting in that it was against 11-seed Virginia Commonwealth. Led by Coach Shaka Smart, the Rams won one of those “silly play-in games” I mentioned earlier, then toppled teams like Georgetown and Kansas en route to the Final Four. UConn was a three-seed, and the fourth team was four-seed Kentucky. Upsets were aplenty.
2012 was tame, after two 15-seeds knocked out a pair of two-seeds in the first round. But 2013 saw the Wichita State Shockers, well, shock the nation by reaching the Final Four as a nine-seed. We also got to see 15-seed
Florida Gulf Coast, in their first tournament as a Division I school, topple Georgetown in the first round and San Diego State in the second, with a “Dunk City” craze sweeping the nation. In the end, it was an anti-climactic ending as top overall seed Louisville, but last year’s tournament set the stage for this year’s pretty well.
I doubt anyone would be shocked if Wichita State reached the same stage once again this time around. After all, they’re only the first team in more than two decades to start a season 34-0. Some people might think it’s no big deal since the Missouri Valley Conference isn’t a powerhouse, but winning 34 consecutive games by an average of 16 points per game is not an accomplishment to take lightly. Indeed, they held Brigham Young University, the third highest-scoring team in the nation, to their lowest point total of the season in late November.
There was a point in the season where, even as the Shockers were winning every game they played, they were being held out of the discussion for a top seed because of that “strength of schedule” lark. But when undefeated Syracuse lost four of its last five regular-season games, Villanova got dump-trucked twice by Creighton and soon-to-be national player of the year Doug McDermott and Kansas’ injuries caught up to them late in the season, the best team in Kansas this year finally cemented its deserved spot in the top four.
It’s this wackiness at the top that’s made this season in particular so interesting. For a while, there were just three left unbeaten: Syracuse, Wichita State and Arizona. The Wildcats were the first to go, losing by two on the road at Cal-Berkeley on Feb. 1. Of course, it took a second loss on Feb. 14 to actually drop them below Wichita State in the polls. Such is the system. All this while, a two-loss Florida holds steady, though, admittedly, both of the Gators’ losses were early in the season to ranked, non-conference opponents on the road in Wisconsin and UConn, plus they have strong wins over Kansas, Memphis and Kentucky (twice).
When Syracuse’s Tyler Ennis hit a ridiculous buzzer-beating three to salvage a win over Pittsburgh on the 12th, it looked like they might have a shot to go all the way. But an overtime loss to Boston College a week later triggered an epic downfall, as noted earlier. Losses to Duke, Virginia and Georgia Tech soon followed. That left us where we are now, with Wichita State six wins away from joining Baylor’s women’s team of 2011-12 as the only teams to go 40-0 in a single season. They’ve got the pedigree to do it, but will have to tap dance through the minefield that is the NCAA tournament.
This season especially, there are a number of teams outside of the big names lying in wait to claim some big-time scalps. The aforementioned Creighton Bluejays come to mind immediately. They’re led by scoring machine McDermott, who has amassed more than 3,000 career points — one of just eight players to do so in Division I college basketball history. You let him or three-point specialist Ethan Wragge get in a groove, you’re going to have a bad time. Just ask Villanova. I can also see teams like Iowa State, Cincinnati, ACC regular-season champs Virginia — yes, they beat out Syracuse and Duke — or mid-major hopeful Saint Louis making runs to the Sweet Sixteen at the very least, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see several of them win those games.
With all this in mind, it’s tough to say who’s going to win it all. I’d give you my prediction, but I don’t want you taking any part of my billion-dollar paycheck. Sorry about that.
