I’ve stated for years that the best three weeks on the U.S. sports calendar are the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournament runs. It is five weeks when you throw in the postseason conference tournaments.
When conference tournaments begin, every school in the country has a chance to make an NCAA Tournament dream a reality. That’s what we saw from Texas Southern, who finished eighth in the SWAC and entered the postseason tournament with 20 losses. After winning the SWAC Tournament, TSU found itself in Dayton playing Farleigh Dickinson University [FDU] in the First Four of the NCAA Tournament.
No other sporting event can captivate the nation and rally fan bases of schools in every corner of the country. The events we’ve witnessed the past couple of weeks have done nothing but reaffirm the notion that March Madness is the best.
The single elimination format and unpredictable nature of the tournament is on display during the opening weekend. Smaller, lesser-known schools get their chance to take swings at the giants of college basketball.
We saw No. 13 seed Furman shock No. 4 seed Virginia of the ACC with a last-second 3-pointer. We saw Princeton of the Ivy League advance to the Sweet 16 with victories over Pac 12 tournament champion Arizona and a surprisingly easy victory over a very good Missouri team.
Last, but not least, was FDU. The No. 16 seed pulled off the biggest shocker of the tournament, knocking off Big Ten Conference champion and No. 1 seed Purdue in the East Regional first round. Sean Moore’s three-pointer secured the upset, as his mother Shanika Tyler kept screaming, “That’s my son.”
During the second weekend, we saw a little giant and New York in 5’8” Markquis Nowell of Kansas State put on a show for two nights in Madison Square Garden.
The only thing that kept Nowell’s homecoming from being a complete success was Florida Atlantic University, a talented group of ballers from Boca Raton. The team entered the tournament with the most wins, despite being under the radar for virtually the entire season.
That changed overnight as FAU knocked off Tennessee and Kansas State to advance to the school’s first ever Final Four. It is an amazing story.
FAU will be joined in Houston this weekend by Miami and San Diego State, who are also making respective first Final Four appearances.
The Final Four’s familiar name is Connecticut, which steamrolled its way to the Final Four with one dominant performance after another.
And that is the beauty of the NCAA Tournament. You just do not know who is going to emerge out of those first two weeks. Just last season, we witnessed a Final Four of Duke, North Carolina, Villanova, and national champion Kansas. The blood doesn’t get any bluer than that, folks. It’s a sharp contrast from this season where you have three newcomers to the big party.
For a life-long college basketball fan such as myself, I am just as excited to see these newcomers in the Final Four as I was to see the brand names in the event last year. All of them have taken the same road as they navigated those potential mine fields of single elimination play.
What is even more exciting about March Madness is that we are starting to see some of that unpredictability seep into the women’s tournament as well. It may be nowhere near what we see in the men’s tournament, but we did see some very surprising results.
The most surprising came during the first weekend when No. 1 seeds Stanford and Indiana lost on their home courts to Ole Miss and Miami, respectively in the second round. It was the first time in NCAA Women’s Tournament history that all four No. 1 seeds didn’t advance to the Sweet 16.Nothing compares to March Madness; and I’m here for all of it.
