The story of March Madness is a lot like the story of the regular season leading up to it: a healthy cross-section of very good teams, few dominants and no strong consensus on who is the best bet to cut the nets in the Final Four in Arizona.
Defending champion Connecticut is a slight favorite to repeat, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, followed by Houston and Purdue. Barring something unexpected, all three teams will earn No. 1 seeds when the brackets are released Sunday afternoon. Tennessee and North Carolina are in the mix for the fourth seed, along with Arizona and maybe even Iowa State, which crushed Houston 69-41 in the Big 12 Tournament on Saturday.
The NCAA Tournament begins Tuesday with the first four, followed by 32 first-round games on Thursday and Friday. The Final Four is set for Glendale, Arizona, April 6-8.
As always, the most interesting discussions will be about the ever-shrinking bubble and who will be among the last squeakers in the 68-team field — 32 of which qualify automatically by winning postseason conference tournaments.
A handful of conference tournament upsets—among them North Carolina State beating Atlantic Coast, Florida Atlantic losing to American Athletic and Oregon winning the Pac-12—meant highly-ranked teams would gobble up more of the remaining 34 spots in total. It made the wait more dangerous for teams like Indiana State, Virginia, Seton Hall and St. John’s, while making Sunday a much tougher trip for the bracket selection committee.
“This is the fifth year I’ve done this — I’ve never enjoyed Saturday night because it’s hard to pick the final teams,” Jamie Pollard, Iowa State’s athletic director who is on the committee, said on social media. “This year is more difficult than all previous years combined. Unfortunately, some very good groups will not be dancing.”
Several weeks ago, Gonzaga was considered a bubble team, but a run of nine wins in 10 games has lifted the Zags, and although they lost their conference tournament final to Saint Mary’s, they will take the field for the 25th straight year. That would be one less than Michigan State, which is trying to reach its 26th consecutive tournament in the nation’s top spot — if it makes it.
As for the job of actually filling out those parentheses — good luck.
Last year, Purdue entered the tournament as a favorite only to become the second No. 1 seed in history to be knocked out in the first round. The Final Four consisted of UConn, Miami, Florida Atlantic and San Diego State — a team selected from only six of the approximately 3.6 million in the NCAA challenge. None of those teams were better than fourth.
Some believe this is the end game in a sport that has been upended by roster turmoil at all levels. The birth of player compensation agreements and more liberal transfer rules has ushered in an era in which coaches must be as concerned with assembling teams over months as they are with programs over years.
Let it be.
“We have another chance to compete for a championship,” FAU coach Dusty May said. “And when every team in the country starts their season — and usually the season starts almost as soon as the other one ends — your goal is to make the NCAA tournament. There are 360 teams now and 68. We are confident that we will be one of those teams that have a chance to compete for the biggest championship in our game, in our sport, college basketball. “
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AP basketball writer Tim Reynolds contributed to this report.