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It is probably the most fantastic time of the yr: Will Caitlin Clark finish her historic faculty profession with a hoop? Will Cinderella put on a 10-gallon cowboy hat? Can Purdue keep away from one other embarrassing early exit?
The brackets for the boys’s and ladies’s NCAA Division I faculty basketball tournaments will likely be unveiled Sunday. The boys’s bracket will likely be revealed first on CBS at 6 p.m. ET, adopted shortly after by the ladies’s bracket on ESPN.
Then, we’re underway. The boys’s match suggestions off on Tuesday, March 19, and the primary full day of video games will likely be Thursday, March 21. The ladies’s first video games happen on Wednesday, March 20, and the total spherical of 64 will start on Friday, March 22. The championship video games will happen on April 7 (ladies’s) and April 8 (males’s).
Right here are some things to look at for on Choice Sunday and past because the tournaments begins subsequent week:
Can Caitlin Clark win a title in her final yr?
Look, it is Caitlin Clark’s world. Clark is the largest star in the complete sport — man or girl — and having introduced she intends to go professional after this season, this will likely be her remaining crack on the NCAA match.
Her Iowa Hawkeyes will doubtless land a prime seed. However they will not be the favorites: Undefeated South Carolina, led by legendary coach Daybreak Staley, will nonetheless be prime canine.
Final yr, Iowa and then-undefeated South Carolina met within the Closing 4, and the 77-73 showdown was an immediate basic during which Clark scored 41 factors en path to handing the Gamecocks their solely lack of the season. However a tough comedown value Iowa the title sport. Clark and the Hawkeyes got here out flat towards a scorching Louisiana State staff led by Angel Reese, who cruised to a 102-85 win and a championship ring. LSU and Reese will likely be again, too. [eyes emoji]
Because the bracket is unveiled, be careful for these rematches, which might make sure to draw massive audiences.
It is laborious to overstate what Clark has achieved for the ladies’s sport. She handed the file set by Pistol Pete Maravich in 1970 to turn into the all-time main scorer in NCAA historical past. Scores for girls’s faculty basketball are up 60% throughout all nationwide networks, they usually’ve topped rankings for the boys’s sport on FOX, in keeping with the community’s analytics chief. Final weekend, as Clark led Iowa to a comeback victory within the Massive Ten championship sport, the viewers averaged greater than 3 million viewers, peaking in extra time at almost 4.5 million. That is not simply first rate; that is higher than almost each males’s sport but this season.
The ultimate 1-seed within the males’s match should be up for grabs
Three of the 4 prime seeds within the males’s match appear locked down by Houston, Connecticut and Purdue. However who will nab that remaining spot?
The early cash had been on Tennessee, a program that has by no means reached the Closing 4 nor earned a 1-seed regardless of 25 match appearances. However the Volunteers faltered final weekend at house towards the Kentucky Wildcats, then dropped a complete dud within the opening spherical of the SEC Match on Friday, falling 73-56 towards bubble staff Mississippi State.
That has opened the door for North Carolina, a perennial powerhouse and six-time champion. The 26-6 Tar Heels have misplaced just one sport by double digits, regardless of a bruising non-conference schedule. In the event that they win this weekend’s ACC Match, they’re doubtless a lock. But when they fall out early, they might lose their shot to a robust displaying on Saturday by Iowa State.
The ultimate 1-seed will be part of some traditional suspects within the Connecticut Huskies, the returning champions hoping to turn into the primary staff to go back-to-back since 2007, and the Houston Cougars, the doubtless prime general seed who hasn’t misplaced since early February. As for the Purdue Boilermakers, each match lately appears to be a battle. After dropping of their first matchup final yr to 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson — solely the second 1-seed to ever lose to a 16-seed — Purdue followers could also be relieved to win a single sport.
David J. Phillip/AP
Put in your cowboy hat and root for Stetson
Let your longshot Cinderella choose for the boys’s match be Stetson, the tiny Florida faculty that may seem within the match this yr for the primary time ever. (Their mascot is the Hatters! As within the cowboy hats! Sure, that Stetson!)
The Hatters are more likely to be a 16-seed, that means they’re going to should knock out a 1-seed to be able to advance. That is a tall order, sure, however one which now not feels unimaginable now that it is occurred twice earlier than. (They might additionally wind up in a play-in sport towards one other 16-seed to be able to earn the prospect to play a prime seed.)
Nonetheless, here is why Stetson simply may need a preventing likelihood: The Hatters are led by one among faculty basketball’s prime scorers in 6’3″ guard Jalen Blackmon. Blackmon has averaged greater than 21 factors this season and scored 43 (!) factors, his highest complete of the yr, in final week’s Atlantic Solar convention championship remaining towards Austin Peay, a 94-91 thriller.
Blackmon might enter the match having scored extra this season than every other participant within the nation second solely to at least one (the very dominant and very tall man at Purdue, Zach Edey). Typically the fairy mud hits guys like this at simply the precise time — and even Goliath will be toppled when David has a scorching hand.
Different could-be Cinderellas to maintain your eye on: Be careful for the Drake Bulldogs (a perennial mid-major darling again for one more shot after a disappointing first-round ouster final yr), the Grand Canyon Lopes (coached by one-time Cinderella himself Bryce Drew, whose Valparaiso squad toppled Ole Miss in 1998) and the James Madison Dukes (31 wins, together with a gap evening stunner towards then-No. 4 Michigan State; who can say they can not do it once more?).
Get able to say farewell to the present lineup of conferences
The Pac-12, what was as soon as a storied convention, will likely be no extra subsequent season. No program has ever come near absolutely the dominance of John Picket’s UCLA squads (10 championships, a run of 10 straight Closing Fours), and three-time champion Stanford has been a modern-day heavyweight within the ladies’s sport.
However this yr’s basketball tournaments mark the tip for the convention as we all know it. Subsequent yr, Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington will be part of the Massive Ten; Cal and Stanford will be part of the ACC; and Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah will be part of the Massive 12. (The 2 remaining groups, Oregon State and Washington State, nonetheless hope to rebuild a brand new Pac-12. “We’ll battle it out,” Oregon State’s president advised NPR final fall.)
The Pac-12 is simply the most recent casualty of how faculty soccer continues to drive a reshaping of school athletics. The period of the regional convention is over, and the period of the super-conference might quickly start.
And there is an ever-looming menace that the brand new energy conferences may select to interrupt away from the NCAA to be able to type their very own league. Doing so may devastate the NCAA tournaments, which draw their magic from the single-elimination format that pits big-time applications towards little upstarts in do-or-die contests. It is irreplaceable. Take pleasure in it whereas it lasts.