Stanford, Uconn top the bracket
N.C. State, South Carolina also No. 1 seeds for NCAAS A9 >
Uconn is in its normal spot with a No. 1 seed for the women’s NCAA Tournament. Familiar territory for Stanford and South Carolina, too.
It’s a brand new day for North Carolina State. And the Huskies, while used to their position in the bracket, are facing some uncertainty after coach Geno Auriemma tested positive for the coronavirus.
N.C. State is a No. 1 seed for the first time, joining Stanford, South Carolina and Connecticut on the top lines for the San
See where everyone was placed in the complete tournament bracket.
Antonio-themed regions for the women’s tourney. The Cardinal earned the overall No. 1 when the field was revealed Monday night.
Auriemma’s Texas arrival will be delayed. He will remain in isolation for 10 days and can rejoin the team on March 24. The other members of Uconn’s travel party have tested negative for COVID-19.
He’ll miss the Huskies’ opening game against High Point — one of four firsttimers in the NCAAS — and a potential second-round matchup against either Syracuse or South Dakota State.
While the coronavirus caused many
disruptions to the schedule throughout the regular season, it looks as if most of the teams in the field made it to the tournament healthy.
Stanford, which will open against Utah Valley, had quite the odyssey this season because of the coronavirus. It had to play on the road for nine weeks after Santa Clara County health officials announced they were prohibiting all contact sports in late November.
The Cardinal, who are looking for their third national championship, are the top seed in the Alamo region. The Hemisfair, Mercado and River Walk are the other region names.
For the past few years, earning one of the top 16 seeds would give a team home games in the tournament’s first two rounds, but that’s not the case this year. Every game will be played in the San Antonio area because of the pandemic, with the last four rounds tipping off at the Alamodome.
This could be one of the most wide-open tournaments, with a dozen teams capable of winning the title. There were five different No. 1 teams in The Associated Press women’s basketball poll this year, including the Huskies, who finished the season at No. 1.
The national semifinals take place on April 2, and the championship game will be held April 4.
Tennessee continued its streak of making the NCAA
Tournament all 39 years. Joining High Point as NCAA rookies are Stony Brook, Utah Valley and Bradley.
Notre Dame’s run of 24 straight NCAA appearances came to an end. The Irish were one of the first four teams out of the tournament.
Even without Notre Dame, the ACC is well represented with eight teams in the field. The SEC and the Big Ten each had seven schools earn bids. The Pac-12 had six. The Big 12 had five.
With no tournament played last season because of the virus, Baylor is still the defending champion. Coach Kim Mulkey’s team is very different from the one that won the title, but still is quite talented, winning the Big 12 regular season and conference tournament.
The British monarchy came in for well-deserved criticism in the throneshaking interview Oprah Winfrey conducted with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle. I believe every allegation the couple made, including the bombshell accusation that one family member expressed concerns about the skin color of the couple’s progeny. (Among other things, that suggests a gross misunderstanding of genetics. Given the fact that Meghan is a lightskinned biracial woman and Harry is a pale white man, Archie, their firstborn, was quite likely to turn out just as he did: white.)
Still, it is worth remembering that there is only so much damage the British royals can inflict. They don’t run the government. Queen Elizabeth is the titular head of state, but she doesn’t tell the prime minister or the British Parliament what to do. British citizens have the right to vote. Great Britain is one of the world’s oldest and most stable democracies.
Why the elementary civics lesson? Well, across the pond in the United States, many citizens seem to have forgotten the value of a stable democracy. Resentful of a browning America, upset by cultural change and misled by the Trump presidency, a significant minority of U.S. citizens yearns for a dictator — a king, if you will — as long as he is white and views the country through the same nostalgic lens that they do.
Our myths tell a different story, of course. Starting with elementary school, the textbooks tell a story of a freedom-loving people who threw off the yoke of an oppressive king to chart a course that changed the history of the world. Only in recent decades have those textbooks dared to address the fact that those "freedom-loving" former colonists wanted to grant liberty only to white men. But as the nation matured, its founding document, the U.S. Constitution, matured as well, granting full citizenship to all its people, whether male or female, Black, white or brown.
Black and brown citizens still had to fight for the rights guaranteed by the Constitution — protesting, suing, marching, dying — to secure the franchise, to eat in restaurants and attend decent schools, to buy a house in any neighborhood they could afford. Those valiant Americans helped their nation to become the democracy that is held up as a model to other countries.
But it seems that the more demo
cratic the nation becomes, the more some of its citizens resent the expansion of rights to those who don’t look like them, sound like them or worship as they do.
President Donald J. Trump’s tenure was marked by a series of brazenly authoritarian moves. He tried to bribe the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political rival, Joe Biden. He mocked and demeaned reporters and encouraged violence against them. He used the powers of his presidency to protect his corrupt friends from the law.
And most gallingly, he attacked a fundamental pillar of democracy — the peaceful transition of power. He claims that he did not lose the election and tried to pressure other Republican officials into denying Biden his rightful victory. Scores of elected Republican officials went along with the lie and continue to do so.
In state legislatures across the country, Republicans are erecting barriers to the franchise, hoping they can stay in power by eroding one of the fundamental tenets of any healthy democracy — the right to vote.
All my life, I have heard politicians insist that democratic ideals must be respected at all costs. But it turns out that the Trumpists among them didn’t mean it.
Researcher Matthew C. Mcwilliams has found that about 40% of Americans “favor authority, obedience and uniformity over freedom, independence and diversity.” Eighteen percent of Americans are “highly disposed” to authoritarianism; they are ready for a strong leader who doesn’t have to be bothered with Congress or elections. They don’t care about protecting civil liberties — especially for those who don’t look like them.
American democracy was given a reprieve with the Biden presidency, but the threats aren’t over. Too many citizens are willing to jettison the promises of the Constitution for the privilege of sitting at the top of the cultural heap.
Trump’s acolytes in high office don’t seem to have a problem with that.