Had we been paying attention, we might have seen this coming. On the first day of the season, James Madison upset fourth-ranked Michigan State, officially pushing the 2023-24 season off the rails. In the first seven weeks, four different teams held the No. 1 ranking. The overall No. 1 in the tournament — UConn — didn’t ascend to the top until Week 11.
Advertisement
So, fittingly, on the last two days of the regular season, all hell broke loose. A Stanford transfer hit a buzzer-beating banked 3-pointer to force overtime and send NC State into the ACC tournament final; and then the Wolfpack, and their heat-feeling coach, went out and won the thing. Not to be outdone, Duquesne, Oregon and UAB won their conference tournaments, creating unprecedented bubble-popping, and not of the champagne variety. Three of the eventual No. 1 seeds all lost in their conference tournaments. Mississippi State ostensibly ran Tennessee off the 1-seed line, and Iowa State simply ran Houston out of the gym.
Cut to the committee room:
OK, maybe it wasn’t quite that arbitrary. Arguing the bracket nuances is Selection Sunday Sport, and in the committee’s defense, this was unprecedented madness before the Madness. Never before had so many as three bids been swiped in the last 24 hours; this was five-alarm thievery.
But still, the bracket created some … questions? The Zags are a 5 seed. Duquesne was the sixth seed in what would have been a single-bid Atlantic 10 had the whole tourney not collapsed; the Dukes are an 11-seed and James Madison, the same JMU that beat Michigan State and then went out and won 30 more games, is a 12.
The Mountain West appears mis-seeded nearly across the board. New Mexico won the Mountain West, a league that anyone who actually watched college basketball knew was pretty good; the Lobos were 5-6 in Quad 1 and yet committee chairman Charles McLelland intimated that there were not four bid-stealers like everyone thought; there were five. Had the Lobos not won the conference, we can presume they would have been out with Indiana State. Meanwhile, Boise State and Colorado State got booted to Dayton for the First Four, and Nevada got smacked with a 10 seed.
Advertisement
The Big East got missed entirely, earning only three bids. A clearly confident Rick Pitino was asked about his chances to make the tourney after St. John’s lost to Connecticut in the Big East semifinals. He referenced the back page of the New York Post from that day, showing the dancing Johnnies. “I mean if the New York Post is not the Bible, who am I going to believe?” But not only did the Johnnies not get invited to the dance; they weren’t even among the first four out.
Yet even with its perceived imperfections, this 2024 NCAA Tournament bracket might be suitable for framing. Change is coming to the NCAA Tournament. Expansion is almost guaranteed, automatic qualifier reconsideration is at least on the table. Messing up the most beautiful piece of parallel line artwork is the next item on the to-do list for the college football group that couldn’t even play its expanded field before expanding it.
Ironically and unintentionally, the chaotic weekend fed the beast with all of this bid-stealing.
It gave the NCAA Tournament selection committee the chance to sound its most compassionate tone, many taking to Twitter to rue the teams that couldn’t get in. Suddenly expansion doesn’t sound blasphemous; it’s downright magnanimous. Imagine four to eight more bids. Consider the children!
GO DEEPER
The 10 most intriguing players in the NCAA Tournament
Except if you study this bracket, really dig in, you will see this will not be Lady Liberty calling to the huddled masses — bring us your Indiana State Sycamores and their No. 29 NET ranking. No, it will be — bring us your lousy nonconference schedules, your NET manipulators and your teams that already have every advantage.
“I understand access, I understand the special nature (of Cinderellas) and certainly respect that,’’ Sankey told The Athletic on Saturday, “but right now in college athletics, nothing is static.’’ Fairy tales, apparently, are for suckers.
Advertisement
If it seems impossible that anyone would dare mess with Cinderella, do remember the football schools already forced the restructuring of the NIT, denying the regular-season champions automatic entry in favor of two spots for each of the Power 6 teams that don’t make the NCAA field. Of course, Ole Miss, Washington, Indiana, Pitt and St. John’s already have declined the invites. So what could go wrong with messing with the NCAA Tournament bracket?
It is, of course, impossible to kill the true spirit of the NCAA Tournament. The storylines always win out, and this one produces plenty. Connecticut is trying to become the first back-to-back winners since 2007, and Purdue is trying to flip its March script and finally win it all. Dan Monson got fired a week ago; he’s coaching Long Beach State against Arizona. Stetson is making its debut in the tourney while Gonzaga is on its 25th consecutive appearance and Michigan State on its nation’s-best 26th. Zakai Zeigler is the starting guard for Tennessee; his younger brother, Armoni, plays for Saint Peter’s. The two meet in the first round. Samford brings its BuckyBall to Salt Lake City for a date with Kansas, while the Jayhawks have a potential second-round date with McNeese State. The two teams have never met, but their coaches are forever linked in the pages of the FBI.
Sometimes chaos can be delicious.
GO DEEPER
What happened to the 2021 NFL Draft QBs? Why Justin Fields and others are with new teams
(Photo of James Madison’s Terrence Edwards Jr.: Adam Ruff / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)