March Madness is a jigsaw puzzle and no one holds all of its pieces. There has never been a perfect bracket (the odds of doing so are around 1 in 9.2 quintillion) and the closest recorded pursuit of perfection was in 2019 when a Columbus, Ohio native went 49 for 49 before his bracket busted…
Category: The Field
The March to Madness
A couple of centuries ago, German theologian/GOAT Friedrich Schleiermacher defined religion as an intuition that “reveals the infinite within the finite.” It’s a shame this dude never lived to see the NCAA tournament: an infinitude of possibilities contained within one finite eventuality. March Madness is a sacred glimpse at infinity. Played out 1,000 times you…
Early Season Storylines
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like March We may be months away from knowing who will win the Bachelor (my money is on Sarah C), but college basketball’s non-conference play has already started to sew the seeds of March. Close games and stunning upsets have been the norm and not the outlier this season,…
The Contenders
The Contenders Duke Blue Devils You don’t need to know much about college basketball to see that Duke is the most talented team in the country. They start four future NBA first-rounders (Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett, Cam Reddish, and Tre Jones) and only lost twice when all of these players were healthy. Ranking in…
The Cinderellas
The Cinderellas Belmont Bruins I was ecstatic to see Belmont make the cut as one of the last at-large teams. The Bruins notched 26 wins in a very competitive Ohio Valley Conference and actually beat out Murray State for the regular season league title. They were neck and neck with Ja Morrant’s Racers in…
Conference Tournament Schedules
America East – March 9th – 16th (ESPN+) American Athletic – March 14th – 17th (ESPN2/U) Atlantic 10 – March 13th – 17th (ESPN+, NBCSN, CBS) ACC – March 12th – 16th (ESPN/ESPNU/ESPN2) ASUN – March 4th – 10th (ESPN+, ESPN) Big 12 – March 13th – 16th (ESPNU, ESPN, ESPN2) Big East – March…
Reseeding the Field
Teams remaining, highest to lowest seeds: Kansas (1), Villanova (1), Duke (2), Purdue (2), Michigan (3), Texas Tech (3), Gonzaga (4), Kentucky (5), Clemson (5), West Virginia (5), Nevada (7), Texas A&M (7), Florida State (9), Kansas State (9), Syracuse (11), Loyola-Chicago (11). My power rankings leading into the second weekend: 1. Villanova 2,…
The Field: Part 1
Welcome to The Field, an episodic look at the squads still alive in this year’s tournament. In each edition I will lay out the current field and provide a ranked list of the remaining teams. Here’s what I’ve got as of Selection Sunday, with actual NCAA tourney seeding included to the right of each name….