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Monday, May 6, 2024
Collectively, the 2015 NCAA Tournament was a roller coaster. There was the high of the first few days before the tourney slipped into mediocrity in its middle rounds, only to rise high again for a big finish at the end, worthy of all the history of such a splendid event.
The thinking seems to be that the main motivation for St. John’s to be ready to hire Chris Mullin is that the school wants to follow the Fred Hoiberg model of hiring an alumnus who was a former NBA front office before making a splash as a college coach, but the Red Storm will get far more with Mullin.
This year’s NCAA Tournament has not brought us many true upsets, but it will bring us a Sweet 16 full of history, though.
As far as drama goes, Thursday at the NCAA Tournament was as about as good as it can get. But there’s also a good chance that such games aren’t going anywhere and are going to be the norm this year. And maybe for the foreseeable future.
The NCAA Tournament has set its field, and some teams are happy and some are not. Plus a couple of teams changed coaches and one team that’s dancing will be without a key player unless they go far.
Some brief college basketball thoughts as we near the end of February and now March and tournament time is just around the corner:
What looked like it should’ve been the game of the night wasn’t much of a game at all. Iowa State sometimes gets on those offensive runs at home when it looks like one of the top five teams in the country, and the Cyclones did it Thursday night in a 95-77 win over Arkansas. A game that looked to have a ton of promise coming in was never really close, and the Razorbacks were tagged with their first loss in seven games.
As part of this weekend’s big kick off to the Christmas shopping season, yesterday was dubbed Small Business Saturday across the country. The basketball schedule for the day might have qualified under that designation, as few of the biggest names were in action, in part because the big holiday tourneys ended a few days ago. What the day may have lacked in big names, though, it did not lack for stories.
Membership changes have been happening at quite a pace of late in the Sun Belt, and it was a new member that stole the show for much of this past season and seems poised to lead the way in the future.
The Panthers enter their final season in the CAA in a similar situation to Old Dominion, and not just because they’re leaving. Like the Monarchs, they don’t have much returning and thus have a lot unknown.
