March madness

Its been 24 months. Is anyone else excited by the prospect? It helps me that U Mich is a projected one seed. This thread is to talk about the joy of march.

How great would it be if both Duke and Syracuse didn’t make the tournament?!!

First, Michigan is over rated. They don’t have the guard play to go deep. They match up poorly against Illinois, which has a monster at center and better playmakers at guard. Michigan has a monster recruiting class coming in, so they look to get even better in the coming years, which is scary for the Big 10.

Can Gonzaga win this? An undefeated season would be historic, but there still are questions as to whether this team is tested. Certainly, the WCC is a cake walk.

I was hoping for a Duke vs Michigan State PLAY-IN game. That would have been awesome.

Yeah, when was the last time Duke had to play in the first round of the ACC tournament.

Just have to say, the BYU/Gonzaga WCC championship game made me worry some about Gonzaga. I worry that they could be the 2nd #1 seed to lose to a #16 if they aren’t careful. BYU played a very good first half. I think if they had been able to keep the score like it was at the half, for the first 5 mins of the 2nd half rather than letting Gonzaga get back so close, they might have pulled off the upset. Hope that really wakes Gonzaga up.

Also hope that helps BYU with their seeding, though I’d prefer not being in the 7-10 range. You often get a sleeper that slipped in the first round then get to play a 1 or 2 in the second. Unfortunately, I don’t see them getting higher than 7 and if they drop lower than 10 they might end up in a First Four game. Oh well, that is what makes it the Madness of March, isn’t it?

And yes, it would be so great to see neither Duke nor Syracuse in the tournament.

Halfway there…

I am setting the over/under at 2.5 teams that have to leave the NCAA Tournament due to Covid.

What do we think, Syracuse gets in after that performance even though they lost on a buzzer-beater? My perception of the committee being biased suggests yes. :man_shrugging:

As long as there aren’t too many short people on the committee.

UVA also now out of the ACC tourney with positive tests. They should cancel the remaining games. Everyone has been in the same building for days. All remaining teams safely have an NCAA bid as well so there’s no good reason to play those games.

Yeah, UVA has the opportunity to have most of their players and staff still get 7 consecutive negative tests to participate in the NCAA tourney. Keep playing and exposing people and some may end up bowing out of the NCAA tourney after having gotten in.

Now Kansas is out of the B12.

The article I read said that teams only need 5 players able to play to continue in the tournament. And that they have until Sunday to say if they will play or not and Tuesday is the last day a team can be substituted for a team that has to drop out. Going to be interesting.

So the long weekend is Friday through Monday this year instead of Thursday through Sunday?

Glad BYU got in and got such a high seeding. Not so glad they get the winner of MSU/UCLA. I didn’t hear one person yesterday give BYU a chance to advance.

Really interested to see what kind of run GT can put together. Alvarado is still a significantly underrated pg imo.

No offense, but I hope the answer is “not much of one”. As an Illinois fan/alumnus, I hope Illinois blows through the first two weekends without much difficulty. Also, I think Loyola-Chi got absolutely robbed by the committee. They are a top 10 team in the country in both Kenpom and the NET score that the committee is supposedly using. How the hell do you drop a top 10 team to an 8 seed? That’s an insult not only to Loyola, but it is a crappy thing to do to Illinois to make them play a top 10 team in the second round. In a weird way I hope Ga Tech can beat them so that I have no sadness about the Illini bashing Ga Tech in the second round.

I’m not a GT fan by any means so no offense. I just think they’ll be more competitive than people realize. Do agree Illinois should still win that matchup.

As a UNC alum I’m really excited about finding out if we’ll get the chance to get destroyed by Baylor.

BYU put into a bracket that would have them play on a Sunday, which they shalt not do.
So, there will be some switching of games if they get that far.

I expect you will. My alma mater has been a bunch of underachievers with senioritis most of the season.

With all the games in Indianapolis it probably doesn’t make much difference when they play the games. And a quarter of the bracket was going to get a shorter break and a quarter was going to get a longer one.

But based on what every commentator said on Sunday, there won’t be any movement. Though BYU does have one of the best teams they have had in quite a while, excluding last years. And there center did transfer from Purdue so might have more of an edge playing a B1G team than normal, assuming of course that MSU beats UCLA.

I was going to come in a quote that Britney Spears song for the committee. Oops I did it again.

Maybe they need to assign someone to be the official BYU watcher to make sure they don’t get put in the wrong bracket. Though with this years scheduling, that could have been the problem. Usually it is Th-Sa and Fr-Su each week. This year it is Fr-Su and Sa-Mo the first week and Sa-Mo and Su-Tu the second week.

Yeah, they should seed them first. No, not “1st.” Just have it be the first thing they do when they walk into the room. “OK, BYU is a 6 and therefore they go… here.”

1 Like

Unfortunately, rarely do the Cougars go into selection Sunday with a fairly fixed position. And after seeding gets started they have to do things like make sure teams from the same conference don’t meet until a certain point and that certain teams get or don’t get games in certain parts of the country (though that wasn’t an issue this year). So teams can get moved up and down seeds based on certain criteria. In fact, BYU’s no Sunday play has caused them to be moved both up and down a few times. I believe it even got them into a play-in game one year.

But I would think that there would be a sticky note on the board that says, “BYU can’t be in this section of the bracket”. This year is the first in a long time where they are playing all region 1st & 2nd round games are being played on the same day, ie. East & West 1st & 2nd round games are Saturday/Monday and South & Midwest are Friday/Sunday. Normally they make 4 team pods and place them in subregional sites.

Why should the NCAA tournament committee be required to take this into account? If you make exceptions for one team, then they’re are more or less obliged to make exceptions for anyone. Then it gets out of hand.