The Midwest Regional is the biggest of the four brackets in the NCAA Tournament, as three of the “First Four” games in Dayton will be in this region. Thus, the Midwest has two teams at the 11, 12 & 16 seed lines respectively, for a 19-team bracket overall. Wichita is the 1-seed and this regional will ultimately be settled in Indianapolis. Here’s a concise summation of all 19 teams, touching on their resume and personnel…
TheSportsNotebook will dig into the specifics of all four regional brackets over the next 30 or so hours prior to the beginning of “The First Four” in Dayton. For now, let’s start with nine general thoughts on the overall bracket itself…
The NCAA Tournament bracket is up and the Madness has begun. But before we dig into the field of 68, how about we first take a look back at the events of the past several days in the college basketball conference tournaments? The first nets were cut down as teams won conference tournaments and in no case was a bigger statement than in Indianapolis, where Michigan State thundered to a tournament crown.
If March Madness is the great feast of college basketball, then the conference tournaments are the appetizer. All across America, from Brooklyn to Atlanta to Kansas City to a double down in Las Vegas and a lot of other places in between, the major leagues gather for several days of non-stop hoops.
All of which is not to demean the excitement of March Madness, which I’m as ready for as anyone. Rather, it’s an imploring not to demean the achievements of the regular season that end with a championship
Wichita has come a long way since the redneck driver Owen picked up John Candy and Steve Martin outside a motel in the great movie Planes, Trains & Automobiles and gave them the bad news they would have to go all the way to “Stubbville” to find a train. Today, the train most definitely is running out of Wichita and it’s the undefeated locomotive known as the Wichita State Shockers basketball program.
The final week of the college basketball regular season is here for the power conferences, and for the midmajors and small conferences, a lot of tournament action will tip off on Tuesday. The best story coming into this final week is the heated race for the American Athletic Conference championship, with three teams in the mix and a series of good games ahead.
A Virginia win on Saturday clinches a tie for the conference title, with two opportunities to wrap up the crown outright. Syracuse would pull even with a win of their own. This game is the highlight of the college basketball TV schedule. Other games with significant conference championship implications include…
Here’s a rundown on College Basketball Saturday, what’s on TV and what the implications are. We’ll go in chronological order through the TV schedule and conclude with a Sunday addendum, where there are still a couple big battles
Kansas basketball just keeps thundering along. The Jayhawks have won or shared the Big 12 title each of the last eight years and with a two-game lead in the conference, Kansas is well positioned to make it nine in a row. And they’re doing it with the kind of depth in their starting lineup that wins championships—and not just conference ones.
The Big Ten basketball race got a little tighter this weekend, with Michigan and Michigan State each losing. The Wolverines and Spartans are still in control of the race though. TheSportsNotebook looks at nine key points to know in this conference, with a primary focus on the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry.
Butler basketball is in a new era. After becoming one of America’s darlings with their back-to-back runs to the national championship game in 2010-11, the Bulldogs said goodbye to head coach Brad Stevens, who signed a lucrative five-year deal to rebuild the Boston Celtics. The post-Stevens era has not gone well. In spite of seeming to have enough talent on hand to compete, Butler is struggling along at 12-9, and 2-7 in the newly revised Big East Conference. Let’s look at why…