The calendar now says March, and that makes me a notch more positive than most occasions when it advances. I’m still far enough away from my birthday where I don’t have to worry about that number growing, and it also means there’s gonna be a LOT more live sports available pretty much all day for a while.
And if one loves college basketball as much as moi, it’s a particularly noisy time. Because for as much as I love the actual national tournaments that make up each respective gender’s March Madness (as of last year, both men and women play in one so-named; thank you, Caitlin, Angel and company), it’s the two weeks of conference tournaments that actually create even more of a logjam of streams, real-time updates and white noise to work with. And last night, in the otherwise obscure campus venues of David Lipscomb University in Nashville and the University of North Alabama in Florence the first actual games were played. SB Nation’s Mark Scofield was apparently as jazzed as I am with the preview he dropped prior to tipoff:
The long and winding road to the men’s Final Four begins on Sunday night. In the Atlantic Sun conference.
The ASUN is the first of 31 men’s conference tournaments set to get underway this month, and the ASUN conference tournament begins with a pair of games on Sunday evening. No. 9 Stetson (faced) No. 10 Central Arkansas on the campus of Lipscomb, with the top-seeded Bisons waiting in the wings to take on the winner of that game. Stetson won the ASUN tournament a year ago, knocking off Austin Peay to advance to their first NCAA tournament. Speaking of the Governors they will take on No. 8 North Florida on the campus of North Alabama in Sunday night’s other game, with Austin Peay the No. 7 seed in the ASUN tournament. The winner of the Austin Peay-North Florida game will take on the No. 2 seed North Alabama, also on Tuesday night.
Not that you’re likely to have a sheet of integrity for this, or that you may have placed a side bet on last night’s winners advancing to the actual Big Dance, but if happened to have either of the Florida schools in action last night you’re already SOL. The Governors handily beat NFU, 90-72, while Central Arkansas took one small step toward potential history with an “upset” of Stetson, 77-69. And in a week where every tournament game is a one-and-done merely keeping a season alive for another 24-ish hours is an accomplishment to be savored.
And miracles do occur. ESPN.com’s Keith Lipscomb related a couple of prime examples where a greater likelihood of one has tended to occur:
Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC)
Average seed of champion: 4.3 (2nd highest)
Average combined seed of finalists: 10.3 (Highest)
The MAAC is the only conference to have multiple top-three seeds lose in the quarterfinals in three of the past four years. Since 2018, the top three seeds are a combined 8-10 in the quarters. When most of the big boys get bounced early, mayhem often ensues, and the MAAC hasn’t disappointed in that regard.
At least one team seeded fourth or worse has reached the title game in seven straight tourneys: No. 11 seed Marist won three games to get there in 2023, and 2021 featured the rare 9-vs.-7 seed matchup when Iona beat Fairfield for the auto-bid.
Sun Belt
Average seed of champion: 3.8 (3rd highest)
Average combined seed of finalists: 9.3 (2nd highest)
This year, the Sun Belt is trying a new format for its conference tournament, and the result is maybe the most interesting bracket you’ve ever seen. The numbers you see above from the past four years in a traditional bracket just may have been the impetus for such change, as strange things have been afoot.
Let’s start with the No. 1 seed, which has lost its first game in three of the past four years and hasn’t reached the title game since 2019. The No. 8 seed advanced to the title game three straight years between 2021 and 2023, winning in 2021. (App State was technically the 4-seed from the East Division, which equated to No. 8 overall.)
Finally, there’s the curious case of Texas State: The Bobcats were the No. 1 seed in 2021 and 2022 but didn’t win any games. Then in 2023 and 2024, as the 11-seed both times, they won three games each year to reach the semifinals.
We’ll soon see if seven straight days of conference tournament play brings a different result.
And if that’s not enough, the big girls’ conferences have slotted their own Little Dances for this week, if for no other reason to give them more of a shot at coverage from their linear networks so as to potentiall attract what they’d consider to be their own version of Clark or Reese. And there’s already some pretty intense battles being conducted, though not necessarily on the court. THE ATHLETIC’s Torrey Hart offered this tale in her PULSE newsletter early this morning:
South Carolina women’s basketball will have the No. 1 overall seed in the SEC Tournament thanks to a coin toss victory over No. 6 Texas after the teams ended the regular season in a tie. The coin toss was only third on the list of tiebreak criteria. Thus, we were treated to a riveting 27 seconds of television during halftime of yesterday’s LSU-Ole Miss game. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s custom coin was a nice touch.
And for as competitive as the men are in that conference, the fact that the ladies needed something like this to figure things out bodes for a particularly compelling week ahead.
Games that will start as early as 8 AM pacific time, with some West Coast-based conferences offering quadruple-headers that could extend until well past midnight Eastern if overtimes occur. 31 conferences for both genders, all of whom now apparently matter enough for betting lines everywhere to list them, will be separating wheat from chaff over the next fortnight. More than enough content to satisfy even the myriad number of platforms and networks dedicated to all of this.
At least when it comes to college hoops, we don’t mind one bit if March comes in like a lion.
Courage…