I loved watching #14 Oakland take down #3 Kentucky 80-76. The Golden Grizzlies hit 15 3's. Jack Golhke, a grad transfer from D2 Hillsdale College, hit 10 3's and scored 32 points for Oakland. His 10 3's tied him for the 2nd most 3's in a game in tournament history. Kentucky's coach, John Calipari, builds his teams around the one-and-done style of college basketball at the power program level so I love it when he gets beat.
It's a sad fact that the Power 6 conferences, as currently constituted, have dominated the championships for the last 55+ years. The only school not being in one of those conferences in that time was UNLV in 1990. Within those, only 7 teams have won over half of all 84 titles ever won andI think we can all name them. That being the case, I tend to root against those 7 in particular, so I'm glad that Kentucky fell. UCLA and Indiana are not in the tournament this year, so that makes 3 down, 4 to go.
I have only watched bits and pieces, but what I’ve seen is not very impressive, especially half court offense. Makes me appreciate Les’ motion approach.
Sadly, with all the NIL money and all the major, power conferences jumping from one conference to another for fear of getting behind in the rat race for more TV money, we're destined to see fewer and fewer smaller programs who have any chance at all in the tournament.
Quoting from myself: "I've always though that the NCAA basketball tournament should be like football: with two levels of Division 1. In basketball the mid-major teams have no chance to win the title and very rarely even make it to the final four. Even Steph Curry's Davidson team only got to the elite eight. It's exciting to root for them when they do, but it would be more exciting for them to have a chance at a national championship." As BlueGoldAg wrote, we'll be seeing fewer small programs get past the second round in the future. Eventually, someone will smell the flowers and follow the FBS/FCS model.
This discussion hasn't gotten much action, but I can't let today end without noting that we've seen the last NCAA tournament game to be played by a PAC-12 team as Arizona lost. I know that Oregon State and Washington State will still carry the name, but whatever they do next year, those schools will not represent the PAC-12.
A bit late here but... we went up to the NCAAs in Spokane to see my wife's St Marys team. Sadly, the mighty Gaels lost but we still had a great time.
We were there for a true March Madness experience when Yale beat Auburn. Everyone in the arena except Auburn fans started going nuts for Yale- it was wild. Also a great story about Yale's band not being able to make the trip so the University of Idaho's band learned the Yale songs and went to support the team.
I get that college sports are changing big time, in many ways not for the better. But there are still great underdog stories and fun times out there.