As another crazy first weekend of the NCAA tournament ends, the remaining 16 teams are not crazy at all.
13 come from the Power 5 conferences
the other three are:
Wichita State -- legitimate window with current roster and underseeded
Gonzaga -- seem to be as dangerous as they ever have been
Xavier -- excellent tourney team with a pretty fortuitous road
other very highly seeded teams outside of the Power 5 include Villanova and us and if you want to go to the fifth seed UNI and Iowa State.
And I will contend that all of those teams lost to teams that were better than they were. UNI didn't even look like they belonged on the court with a possibly overseeded Louisville. NC St just looked like a better team than Nova (which is frightening). And Utah is certainly better than we are. We might beat them 3 times out of 10 tries. Iowa St might have been an anomaly losing to UAB but who knows.
I guess what I fear is that despite the unbelievable parity in college basketball and the nature of the tourney itself, the Power 5 conferences seem to be stronger versus the mid-majors than ever. The one exception right now is Gonzaga who has been an elite level team for too long to be considered anything but a high major. What they have done there is absolutely miraculous.
On one hand there is enough talent to go around and you only need to really hit on 2 or 3 players to be exceptional. On the other hand, I'm a little disheartened that more mid-majors did not move on.
This post was edited on 3/23 5:06 PM by lpucci
13 come from the Power 5 conferences
the other three are:
Wichita State -- legitimate window with current roster and underseeded
Gonzaga -- seem to be as dangerous as they ever have been
Xavier -- excellent tourney team with a pretty fortuitous road
other very highly seeded teams outside of the Power 5 include Villanova and us and if you want to go to the fifth seed UNI and Iowa State.
And I will contend that all of those teams lost to teams that were better than they were. UNI didn't even look like they belonged on the court with a possibly overseeded Louisville. NC St just looked like a better team than Nova (which is frightening). And Utah is certainly better than we are. We might beat them 3 times out of 10 tries. Iowa St might have been an anomaly losing to UAB but who knows.
I guess what I fear is that despite the unbelievable parity in college basketball and the nature of the tourney itself, the Power 5 conferences seem to be stronger versus the mid-majors than ever. The one exception right now is Gonzaga who has been an elite level team for too long to be considered anything but a high major. What they have done there is absolutely miraculous.
On one hand there is enough talent to go around and you only need to really hit on 2 or 3 players to be exceptional. On the other hand, I'm a little disheartened that more mid-majors did not move on.
This post was edited on 3/23 5:06 PM by lpucci