Let the March Madness begin
❚ NCAA men’s basketball tournament bracket, sleepers to watch.
❚ Coming Tuesday: Tournament bonus section with team-by-team capsules, regional analyses
Are you ready for some upsets? I’m not talking about 12 vs. 5, or even 13 vs. 4. I’m talking 16 vs. 1 and 15 vs. 2.
There have been no great teams in college men’s basketball this season, and as the bracket reveal showed us Sunday afternoon, there are no clearcut favorites to reach San Antonio. If you’ve ever wanted to pick all doublefigure seeds to the Final Four, this is the year to do it. After a wacky regular season, anything seems possible this month. The nickname March Madness has never been so appropriate.
And yet when it came to the bracket reveal, it made ... some sense.
At-large bids are always the hot topic, and the selection committee surprised everyone by putting in Syracuse and leaving out Southern California.
To the selection committee’s credit, it was true to its word from earlier this season: wins in November mattered as much as wins in March. Oklahoma and Trae Young, who turned a lot of heads in 2017 but have sputtered since the New Year, got in with ease. The Sun Devils were rewarded for a tough non-conference schedule that featured wins at Kansas and against Xavier.
With no dominant team in the West — Arizona and Gonzaga were given four seeds — someone had to be shipped out to Los Angeles. Xavier, which lost in semifinals of the Big East Conference tournament, is the right choice there. Kansas was also rewarded with a one seed, though going through Duke or Michigan State doesn’t seem like a prize for anyone.
The biggest conspiracy theory that you’ll read about the next few days: Was the selection committee punishing teams involved in the FBI scandal? Louisville and USC were left out, and Arizona got a four seed even after a dominant performance in the Pac-12 tournament. The scandal that rocked the sport before the season just won’t go away.
We could spend all month debating the decisions of who’s in, who’s out and where they’re going. The bottom line is the best time of year is here, and it’s set to be be crazier than ever. Get your brackets, and your double-figure seeds, ready to go. Games tip off Tuesday.