It's March
Who needs Thanksgiving when March Madness exists?
Several candidates emerge when people wax poetic about which month is the best for sports. October is usually the first to enter the conversation and might be the most obvious answer. Along with the baseball postseason, the NFL, NBA, and NHL are all underway. Add college football, and one has one of the most packed months possible. It’s electric and insane.
What comes next is also not up for debate. March Madness permeates even the most naive sports fan. No matter one’s investment in college basketball, a bracket will be filled out. Friends, families, and coworkers will all enter bracket pools yearning to be the first person in history to pick every game correctly. It’s always a fantasy, but that won’t stop us from undertaking the impossible.
Everyone else’s sentiment about March Madness resonates with me. I am not the biggest college basketball fan. Heck, basketball is probably my least favorite of the “Big Four” sports here in North America. It’s certainly much less enjoyable ever since a certain organization traded a certain player just a little over a month ago.
My thoughts on basketball aside, March Madness is by far the most entertaining and tantalizing collegiate postseason there is. The new College Football Playoff wishes it could be as captivating. Nothing else compares.
I’ll admit, my knowledge of the ins and outs of the 2024-25 college basketball season is limited at best and completely nonexistent at worst. It’s just not been a sport that I’ve particularly cared to watch until the last couple of weeks. But I do understand the basics.
The SEC is supposedly the most dominant conference to ever exist, although I’ve seen doubts about that raised recently. (Those doubts didn’t seem to matter to the selection committee, however. More on that later.) Auburn, Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee—the four best teams in the conference—are all legit Final Four contenders.
Cooper Flagg, the future number one overall pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, is the headliner for a very good Duke team that ran all over a weak ACC this year. The Blue Devils were without his services for much of the ACC tournament after he suffered a left ankle injury in the quarterfinal round. Despite losing their best player, Duke still won the tournament and secured a number-one seed in March Madness.
Just two years removed from being a mediocre D1 program that was hanging on to relevance, St. John’s won the Big East thanks to superstar head coach Rick Pitino.
That obviously isn’t everything. An avid college basketball fan would be able to tell you way more about what happened over the course of the season. Alas, I am not that guy. But like you, and so many others across this great nation, I will be filling out a bracket. So, let’s dive into what I think is going to play out in this year’s iteration of March Madness. What is this based on? Mostly vibes, feelings, and how cool a school’s mascot is. (I’m just kidding! Maybe.)
The True Contenders
The odds are that an SEC team will come out on top. There are a whopping 14 of them in the field, more than any other conference has ever gotten into a single tournament. How justified the selection committee was in awarding the SEC with that many bids is up to whoever one asks. I’d say that the further north one goes, the more opposed one will be.
That being said, one of Auburn, Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama will be in the Final Four. Maybe even a couple of them. Book it.
Auburn was a well-oiled machine for the entirety of the season before losing three of its last four games, including the SEC tournament championship game against Florida. Despite all that, Auburn is still extremely deserving of the number-one overall seed. If the Tigers can shake off those losses, I expect them to be dangerous.
It could be argued that no team is on a bigger heater right now than the Florida Gators, who just won the SEC tournament and haven’t lost in three weeks. It's been a while since Florida has been this formidable in men's basketball. If the Gators are here to stay, the rest of the country needs to be on the lookout.
The other number-one seeds—Duke and Houston—pose different questions. Duke has the best player in the tournament in Cooper Flagg, but how much will his left ankle injury affect his play? Duke can afford to be without him for the Round of 64 matchup against either American or Mount St. Mary’s, but could it survive against Baylor or Mississippi State—two very capable basketball programs—in the Round of 32? Probably. Duke would rather not know the answer to that conundrum.
Houston is my darling and, spoiler alert, my pick to win the whole thing. What Kelvin Sampson has built there is astounding. In the program’s second year in the Big 12, Houston won the regular season and conference tournament titles, with neither competition proving to be particularly difficult for Sampson’s squad. It’s about time that Houston wins the big one, and I think 2025 is the year it finally happens.
The only other true contender, at least in my eyes, is St. John’s. There will be books written about the turnaround that Rick Pitino has orchestrated for the Red Storm. If Pitino and the team have their way, the ending of those books will end with them raising a trophy by the end of all this.
Cinderella, It’s Time to Dance
Underdogs rarely thrive in other sports environments. March Madness gives them the chance to truly shine.
Rarely do the Cinderella teams actually win the whole thing, let alone make it to the Final Four. That doesn’t stop all of America from latching onto a small school from a place nobody has ever heard of and rooting for them to beat the big dogs.
A couple of teams stand out to me right away: Drake and UC San Diego.
The Drake Bulldogs went 30-3 and won the Missouri Valley Conference regular season and tournament titles. After losing back-to-back games to UIC and Murray State early in the conference schedule, Drake rattled off 11 straight wins before finally falling to Bradley on February 16. The Bulldogs have not lost since that day. Watch out for Drake. I’m picking them to beat Missouri in the Round of 64 and then beat either Texas Tech or UNC Wilmington in the Round of 32. I’m calling it now: Drake is going to the Sweet Sixteen.
I think UC San Diego goes even further than that. The Tritons, which, by the way, is one of the coolest collegiate nicknames, are just in their fifth season of competing in Division I. This season was the first that they were even eligible to play in the postseason. They took advantage.
UC San Diego went 30-4, winning its final 15 games. No team in America is hotter than the Tritons right now. Now, the draw for them is tough: they’ll play Michigan, the Big Ten tournament champions, in the Round of 64. I believe they’ll handle business against the Wolverines and beat Texas A&M or Yale in the Round of 32. The Triton Train doesn’t stop there, however, as I have them moving onto the Elite Eight after beating what’ll probably be Auburn. Maybe I’m living in dreamland, but I certainly think that the Tritons have what it takes to make it that far in their first-ever tournament appearance.
Where’s TCU?
TCU didn’t make it because it was not very good this year. End of discussion.
Bubble Controversies
Who’s to say whether North Carolina, West Virginia, Indiana, or Boise State should’ve been the final team in the field. I certainly am not that person. But I do know how to look at the numbers, and just a cursory glance tells me that North Carolina probably didn’t deserve to have a shot at winning a national title this year.
West Virginia, Indiana, and Boise State were the teams that were “snubbed” in favor of the Tar Heels. The second that North Carolina’s name popped up on the screen during the selection show, conspiracies began to emerge. You see, North Carolina’s athletic director, Bubba Cunningham, is the chair of the selection committee. Plenty of sitting athletic directors are on the committee as well, and when their respective schools come up in the conversation about selection, they have to step out of the room. There’s no doubt that Cunningham and the rest of the committee followed that protocol this year. Theoretically, Cunningham’s presence on the committee would have no bearing on whether North Carolina made the tournament or if it didn’t.
But these are humans we’re talking about. Who's to say that the committee was swayed to put North Carolina in because they knew it would make Cunningham feel good, even though the Tar Heels probably weren’t deserving of a bid? That’s just speculation on my part; I have no actual details about the actual goings-on in that room. I just know how humans tend to act, and that behavior—putting in North Carolina to appease a friend—makes sense to me. Now, that might not be what happened at all. The committee might’ve truly thought that North Carolina was a worthy enough squad to put into the 68-team field. No matter what happened, however, the optics are not great.
What’s the solution? It’s simple: school employees should not be on these selection committees. That goes for every NCAA sport. The conflict of interest is just too large, and every measure that the NCAA takes to prohibit any nefarious activity isn’t enough to silence the people who think that something fishy is going on behind the scenes.
Final Thoughts
In summary, Houston wins it all, UC San Diego and Drake capture our hearts, and everybody’s bracket is busted by 3 PM on Thursday. In my opinion, that sounds like a fantastic time.
Nobody knows what is going to transpire over the next several weeks. All I know is that it’s going to be appointment television. I can’t wait for all the buzzer-beaters, upsets, and controversial calls by the officials. It’s going to be a wild ride. Buckle up.