Looking back, Looking ahead

I’d have been better off just saying what I’ve believed all year, the tournament would be chalk but that’s boring. Welp, while we had some great games, it was largely chalk.

Each region has 1-non protected seed. The East has St. John’s, a 5-seed who beat Kansas. The only people surprised by this are rabid Jayhawks fans. In the Midwest, Virginia lost to Tennessee, the 6-seed, who entered the tournament 16th in KenPom, which if we re-seeded that way, they’d have been a 4. Your outliers are out West where we have this year’s Cinderella, the school with the biggest athletic budget in the nation. In the South, Iowa’s win was shocking but they would’ve been a 6 using KenPom for seeding purposes and at one time, were top 20 in offense and defense this year. That game is worthy of a deep dive and I’ll be very curious about Iowa moving beyond 2026. They’ve basically switched bodies with Wisconsin and that will be fascinating to watch play out.

We’re probably a year away from making a definitive statement about the lack of upsets the last two years. I’ll caution anyone who makes too big a deal out of this year. Conference tournament upsets cost us a few really good regular season champs. Don’t know if those teams would have won but the seed lines from 12-15 would have looked much different and that matters! Whatever the case, expansion is a terrible idea.

Let’s now re-seed the remaining 16:

1. Michigan (1)

2. Arizona (2)

3. Duke (3)

4. Houston (4)

5. Illinois (6)

6. Iowa State (7)

7. Purdue (8)

8. Michigan State (9)

9. UConn (10)

10. Alabama (12)

11. Nebraska (13)

12. Tennessee (14)

13. St. John’s (16)

14. Arkansas (17)

15. Iowa (22)

16. Texas (31)

Teams Left With Defensive Concerns (Non Top-20)

Purdue, Illinois, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Texas 

Teams Left With Offensive Concerns (Non Top-20)

Michigan State, UConn, Nebraska, Tennessee, St. John’s, Iowa 

Illinois and Michigan State are just outside looking in here. 

Illinois-Houston is a national title game in the Sweet 16 good and the best matchup. The worst matchup is Texas-Purdue.  The craziest matchup is Nebraska-Iowa.  The old school matchup is Duke-St. John’s. The best bowl game is Michigan-Alabama. Final 4 rematches of yore are Michigan State-UConn and Arkansas-Arizona. And then there is Iowa State-Tennessee 🤷🏼‍♂️

Final thought is about the weekend schedule and how the first two games of the day are in the same region. I understand the desire to get as many games into prime time and fill the whole day but I think staggering start times beginning at 1PM EST and 2PM EST in separate regions and having 2nd game tips in those regions at around 3 and 4PM EST would be ideal and repeat until 8PM EST. Tipping near 10PM EST is ridiculous, especially on Sunday. Realistically, the second games in each region won’t start on time anyway, so you’ll bleed well into the evening and maximize prime time.