A week ago I paid homage to the delicious insanity that March Madness offers us college hoops fans, and this week it reaches its zenith as a host of double- and quadrupleheaders dominate just about every channel and platform that has a stake in the game. The most attention will be paid to those matchups in the Power Four conferences and the Big East which will ultimately contribute the overwhelming majority of the top 16 seeds. In the deeper ones such as the Big 12 and the SEC these will provide important crucibles for the participants and especially bettors to gain valuable insights on themselves from as they inevitably head to the Big Dance.
But that’s on the men’s side. The women have actually settled those verdicts already, with last night producing one of the least surprising results of all, as the ASSOCIATED PRESS bots dutifully “reported”:
UConn rolled to its 24th Big East Tournament championship, beating Villanova 90-51 on Monday night. It was the 50th consecutive win for the defending national champion Huskies (34-0), who enter the women’s NCAA Tournament undefeated for the 11th time in their storied history. The Huskies own four of the five longest winning streaks in Division I, including a record 111-game run.
Actual human being Daniel Connolly of SB NATION added a coupla other details:
Sarah Strong won Big East Tournament Most Outstanding Player, finishing with 18 points and eight rebounds. KK Arnold and Azzi Fudd both made the all-tournament team, with Arnold adding 10 points, seven assists, four rebounds and three steals while Fudd led the team with 19 points and picked up three steals… It’s the Huskies’ 31(st) conference tournament title and 24th in the Big East.
U Conn will now officially join Texas (SEC), UCLA (Big Ten), Duke (ACC) and West Virginia (Big 12) in the upper tiers of their brackets., each of whom emerged victorious from their respective gauntlets over the weekend. And will now get a minimum of 11 days away from the hardwood as a reward–remember the ladies don’t even start their version of Madness until the Friday after the men play their first sixteen “first round” games.
Which got me to thinking–why did the men concede what to me seems to be a damn nice idea to the women in the first place?
Every other sport of consequence rewards its best performing participants with some time off for rest, rehab and bonding practices. Even the conference tournaments themselves have moved toward rewarding those that do better in the regular season with byes into the later days of their expanded-for-TV juggernauts. CBS SPORTS’ David Cobb did a fine job reminding his readers why that’s a necessary evil for the mid-majors. The bigger ones also embrace that strategy but at least on the men’s side all that does is ensure that the ones with the byes are getting a theoretically more tired opponent for their first test. But that also sets up the possibility that that opponent is that much stronger than a traditional bracket matchup such as what The Big Dance embraces–not to mention that may be riding the wave of adrenalin and momentum a couple of wins can produce. And then, a lot less time to recover and regroup.
What the women are also doing with their scheduling is offering less of that to the mid-major afterthoughts who are simply playing for a ticket to join the party. Sure, the eventual winner of the likes of the Ohio Valley and America East conferences has a right to move on, but why are their men’s teams being given any sort of an advantage in the first place?
Yeah, yeah, I know, the networks want as many high profile games as possible in their key weekend time slots. But you tell me how much attention was actually being paid to the majority of key time slot regular season games that were slotted this past weekend while the women were deciding their more prominent automatic bids. Michigan-Michigan State was OK, but North Carolina-Duke was downright dull. The actual title games would have undoubtedly produced better ratings and engagement.
And the fact of the matter is that by the time the biggest conferences like the Big Ten decide their winners on Sunday afternoon the brackets are effectively done and most fans are really hanging around until the Selection Show. There’s probably no less anticipated results during the regular season than those from those unfortunate last acts, and they reward their winners with scant little time to either celebrate or rejuvenate.
Switching to a scenario where the less bougie get the second week of March rather than the first would not only benefit the haves, but if indeed a Cinderella still exists the storyline for such a conquering becomes all the more compelling if it happens to occur.
I can’t imagine there’s a men’s player out there that would not support this. And I’m equally sure most gamblers wouldn’t mind the extra time, either.
Courage…