Welcome back, March Madness. We missed you.
This is the true Madness: Full and noisy arenas, buzzer-beaters, legitimate Cinderellas, even putative home-court (or at least home crowd) advantage in an otherwise neutral-site tournament.
We didn’t really have it last year, when every men’s game was in a bubble in Indianapolis, the women’s tournament took place in the San Antonio area, crowds were limited and socially distanced and everything was hermetically sealed for obvious reasons. And we had nothing in 2020, when the cancellation of conference tournaments came at the very beginning of a mass lockdown and the loss of the national tournament became an early symbol of our deprivation.
We can, and almost certainly will, debate whether COVID-19 is completely in our past. As mask and vaccine mandates are lifted in this country the BA.2 subvariant is taking hold in Europe, and what starts there invariably ends up here. So it’s too soon to celebrate the end of the pandemic, just as it was last June when we first felt liberated from COVID only to quickly discover otherwise.
It is safe to say, though, that in view of what’s come before, what may be in front of us, and everything else happening in the world these days, we need this magnificent distraction as much if not more than ever.
The NCAA Tournament seldom disappoints. Unless, of course, it’s your bracket that’s busted or your alma mater or favorite team going home early, or that wager – whether legal or otherwise – that seemed to be a sure thing until it wasn’t. (More on that below.)
“Nothing can screw up March Madness,” Charles Barkley said on CBS Sunday morning. Give Chuck credit, by the way. When TNT’s NBA announcers were added to the NCAA Tournament crews a few years ago, Barkley was absolutely unprepared to discuss college basketball. He’s much better now.
Saint Peter’s, the Jersey City, N.J., university with a little over 3,000 students, is now an overnight sensation in its 92nd season of intercollegiate basketball after back-to-back upsets of Kentucky and Murray State. The Peacocks have appeared in the NIT12 times (getting beyond the first round twice) and actually won the CollegeInsider.com (CIT) tournament in 2017.
Now they’re America’s Darlings, and their next game will be in Philadelphia, maybe an hour and a half down I-95. You think they’ll have the crowd on their side?
“I’ve got guys from New Jersey and New York City. You think we’re scared of anything?”
Saint Peter’s head coach Shaheen Holloway’s confidence is unmatched
(via @SNYtv)pic.twitter.com/5mvFCDXXne
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) March 20, 2022
And this is probably a reach, but consider: Another small, little-known Jesuit institution made an unexpected tournament run 24 years ago, knocking off Minnesota, Stanford and Florida before losing to eventual national champ Connecticut in the Elite Eight. The attention – and, among other things, increases in donations and enrollment – created enough momentum that Gonzaga built its way to where it is now, a national brand and a basketball power.
Can Saint Peter’s ever come anywhere close to that? Who knows, but what an opportunity this is.
Thursday and Friday reminded us why the first two days of the NCAA Tournament, with wall-to-wall basketball from morning to night, are the best days of the sports year. They are especially so in Las Vegas, where conference tournaments of five different leagues dominated the landscape for a week and a half before ceding the landscape to those who, shall we say, live vicariously through these games.
Even when a game is lopsided there’s reason to pay attention. Cal State Fullerton didn’t figure to beat Duke and end Mike Krzyzewski’s coaching career Thursday night, and the Titans didn’t. But Duke was an 18-1/2 point favorite, and when Fullerton’s Dante Maddox Jr. flushed a breakaway dunk with 3.5 seconds left the final margin was Duke by 17, 78-61. I’m guessing there were loud reactions in casinos up and down the Strip, brackets and betting (and bad beats like this one) being large reasons why this is so enthralling.
It is progress, of course, that the administrators who run things have finally allowed the women’s tournament to use the March Madness designation. The disparities between the men’s and women’s bubbles last year – memorably shown in the video posted by Oregon’s Sedona Prince – shamed the organization into acting, though true equity probably remains some distance away.
The women may be buried from an attention standpoint, but six double-digit seeds scored first-round upsets this weekend to go with seven on the men’s side. And the women made the most of an ABC audience and a capacity crowd in Iowa City when Creighton, a 10 seed, knocked off No. 2 Iowa in the second round Sunday. The winning shot was a 3-pointer with 12.6 seconds left by Lauren Jensen, a transfer from … Iowa.
That’s drama.
10-seed Creighton upsets 2-seed Iowa!
Iowa transfer Lauren Jensen nailed the game winner against her former squad. pic.twitter.com/vnHENmldNR
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 20, 2022
IOWA CITY, IA – MARCH 20: Creighton Blue Jays guard Lauren Jensen (15) shoots over Iowa Hawkeyes forward Monica Czinano (25) and hits the game-winning three-point basket during a second round Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament game between the Creighton Blue Jays and the Iowa Hawkeyes on March 20, 2022, at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, Iowa City, IA. (Photo by Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire), (Icon Sportswire via AP Images)
(When the women’s Sweet 16 takes place this week, hopefully they’ll have those huge March Madness logos at center court just like the men do. For this weekend’s first two rounds of the women’s tournament at campus sites, evidently the host school’s branding is considered more important.)
One more thing about this March: It no longer requires such cognitive dissonance to enjoy the games while understanding the economic imbalance involved. This is the first tournament of the name/image/likeness era, and let’s hope that the players who provide the memorable moments get to cash in legally and without hypocrisy.
@Jim_Alexander on Twitter