March Madness 2010

[Aura]

...Begins tomorrow. Yay for my favorite three weeks of sports for the year .

Anyone confident in their bracket/s? Imo far tougher this year than last. My final four is Kansas, Kansas State (over 'cuse in elite 8 ), Duke (easiest pick of the four), and West Virginia (toss up over UK in elite 8, this is the year for wv if they're going to get close).

[tkam]

This is one of the weaker overall fields in quite some time. I'm really pulling for Syracuse and of course Pitt but I expect Kansas to win it at all as they along with probably Kentucky have a pretty sizable talent gap between themselves and the rest of the field. That said I agree it's one of the best times of the year to be a sports fan and thank god the games are streamed online these days, don't have to take off work anymore

[trevorlane]

Definitely one of the best tourneys in such a long time. I definitely would like to see the field expanded to 96. I'm still not over the fact that 2007 Minutemen couldn't get into the tournament because of the RPI bubble. They beat Florida (granted a bad Florida) and played against OSU (of course without Greg Oden).

[n_maher]

I definitely would like to see the field expanded to 96.

I'm not in favor of this, at all. I think it seriously devalues the tournament and is just a grab for more $$.

[Aimless1]

Agreed. Might be a cash cow for the NCAA but the luster and prestige of the tournament is diminished. I'd be for shrinking the size of the tournament, perhaps down to 32 teams.

[trevorlane]

I understand that expansion of the field may look like a cash-grab which in turn hurts the prestige of the tournament, but I can see the standpoint of the schools in support of it as well. I don't exactly come from an athletic powerhouse of a school, and so most of our annual budget is derivative from grants and loans from public and private sources. UMass receives most of its support for academic programs from foundations, and the school administration helped in part to secure funding, but we lack in alumni funding. Schools like Michigan State, IU, UF, UCLA, OU, U of I, and many others receive funding from its NCAA connections, alumni, and research. For one thing, the NCAA tournament in basketball gives 100% of proceeds back to the schools.

Teams that win get exposure, in turn the legislature will do what it can to give to the school, alumni love to support their teams, and sales from athletic apparel and licensing also help the schools. As of right now 34 schools have won the Basketball tournament in its 71 year history, and of those 28 wins came from 4 schools. There have been 9 expansions in the field thus far. In this current era of college basketball we see better recruiting from schools leading to better parity among the teams, an erosion from the dominance of certain programs. It's no longer expected that the premier conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, PAC-10, SEC) are to dominate the Final Four. As more and more smaller schools now go into the spotlight, it gives the lesser known schools a time to get their name out there for prospective students. The athletics programs will allow for more funding to come into the school to be spent on educational research and scholarships. I'd like to see schools like UNI and St. Mary's receive more exposure to increase their school endowments. Ok anyway, this was a longer response than I expected and my hope is rather than devaluing the tournament itself, the tournament can be a larger vehicle to bring more funding to schools that won't be known outside their geographic locality. Prospective students will have more choice in that sense, and may go to school that better suits them (from just having seen their name and giving them the opportunity of looking up their school information.)

[Audiofiler]

That was one heck of a finish last night, that is for sure. I thought thatladt shot attempt was going in, in fact, I wanted it to. That would have been some shot, had it went down for Butler.

[trevorlane]

Yeah my heart sank on that lost shot. Did you hear that crowd? It's like watching the bad ending to Hoosiers if there was one, and now we know, he was no Jimmy Chitwood

[penger]

Coach K would have never lived that decision down to have Zoubek miss the FT if it went down. The screen set by Howard on Singler was epic to spring Hayward. Great game to watch.

[Salt Peanuts]

Well, not quite the 90 or 96-team expansion that was expected, but still an expansion.

The Associated Press: NCAA approves 68-team men's basketball tourney