TheSportsNotebook’s college basketball coverage will break down the East bracket pod-by-pod for the first weekend, look ahead to the regionals in D.C., make picks and look at some of the betting odds for each team’s chances of making it Atlanta and the Final Four.
There’s going to be plenty of chances in the next couple days for everyone—TheSportsNotebook included—to make Final Four picks and talk about upset possibilities. But here on Selection Sunday Night, let’s look at the newly unveiled bracket from a different perspective. Let’s break it down by pod—the eight teams assigned to each of the opening weekend venues. Which would be the most fun to go if you had the time and money to just pick a spot and go?
When you think of college basketball in the Midwest you think of the Big Ten. That’s understandable, especially this year, when the conference has multiple teams capable of making Final Four runs. But when it comes to individual honors, the brightest stars in the Midwest—indeed the entire nation—are outside the Big Ten and in places off the national spotlight. TheSportsNotebook is picking Creighton’s Doug McDermott as national Player of the Year and St. Louis’ Jim Crews as Coach of the Year.
The power conference tournaments start to warm up tonight, with preliminary games in the Big East and Mountain West. The action picks up tomorrow and hits full stride by Friday when the best team in each league will have played at least one game. In today’s college basketball coverage, our question is going to be a philosophical one—what do these games actually mean?
Virtually every major conference championship race came down to the wire this weekend. Whether it was UCLA sneaking off with the Pac-12, St. Louis pulling out the Atlantic 10 or Indiana’s wild win over Michigan to secure the Big Ten crown, teams were claiming championship hardware. But perhaps no championship was more improbable than the one Marquette secured in the Big East. With the regular season in the books, the Golden Eagles lead TheSportsNotebook’s college basketball coverage, on a night we celebrate the winners.
TheSportsNotebook’s college basketball coverage since the Super Bowl has focused on a narrow look at the nation’s Sweet 16—as defined by Lunardi’s projections—each Friday. The goal is not to quibble with seedings, which are based on the overall body of work, but to get a feel for which of the national championship contenders are really playing their best basketball right now. Obviously, Syracuse is not. At least not yet. Here’s the rundown on everyone else, starting with the 4-line and ascending upward…
Gonzaga has moved to the top of the polls, and the debate is underway about whether the midmajor power is really the best team in the nation. But there’s three other teams away from the spotlight of the BCS conferences that have put together sparkling seasons and need to be on everyone’s radar. It starts with the team that some might argue is the one who’s really the best in the west and that’s the New Mexico Lobos.
Just when we thought they were in, they pulled themselves back out. That might be our operative phrase for a couple SEC basketball teams, notably Kentucky and Tennessee after this past weekend’s games. This a conference that is crazy on the NCAA Tournament bubble right now—while Florida locked up a share of the league title and Missouri is comfortably in the field, it’s anybody’s guess with at least five other teams.
For most of the power conferences, this is the penultimate weekend of the regular season. For Gonzaga and other schools who start their league tournaments early for TV exposure, this weekend brings the curtain down on the regular schedule. If you want to build momentum, there’s no time to waste, so with that in mind TheSportsNotebook’s college basketball coverage continues its weekly breakdown of the top 16 teams in the country—how they’re playing in the present and what the immediate schedule holds.
If you thought it was safe to ignore Alabama sports just because football’s not in season, think again. Alabama basketball has been quietly lurking for much of the year and with SEC leader Florida losing at Missouri last night, the Crimson Tide are now within a game of first place in the loss column. Alabama is one of a few surprise teams that are in position to win championships in the power conferences. But the Tide is the only one that’s also squarely on the bubble of the NCAA Tournament, thanks to a poor non-conference showing. In short, that makes Alabama basketball the most interesting team in the country from now until Selection Sunday. So let’s take a closer took at what the Tide has…