Why this NCAA men's tournament is up for grabs like never before?

 

All season long, this promised to be the most wide-open NCAA men’s tournament in a generation. The bluebloods weren't as blue. The top-ranked teams had obvious flaws. The combination of an extra COVID year for older players, an out-of-control transfer environment and a crop of freshmen that largely weren’t ready for prime time meant teams’ fortunes yo-yoed from game to game, week to week.

Now here we are, nearly done with the first weekend of March Madness, and there’s an important question to ask: Who is going to win the national championship?

Maybe it would be better to say it another way. If you’re still alive by Sunday night in this crazy tournament, go ahead and dare to dream. Even you, Princeton. It’s truly that up for grabs.

A recreation of small sample sizes and microscopic margins has turned into a roulette wheel of possibilities a good way to probable be decided over the subsequent weeks with the aid of health, random shotmaking and perhaps sheer good fortune.

For a moment Saturday, it appeared that Houston might be the 0.33 No. 1 seed to fall on the first weekend, following Purdue and Kansas proper out of the bracket. as an alternative, the Cougars got here from 10 factors in the back of at halftime and eventually asserted themselves to shut down Auburn’s disenchanted bid, 81-sixty four.

but it’s clean Houston’s championship possibilities are as fragile as the injured muscle mass in Marcus Sasser’s groin and Jamal Shead’s knee. each of them performed in opposition to Auburn, and Sasser mainly gave the look of himself with 22 factors in 31 minutes. Can that keep for four extra games and not a lot time to get fully healthful?

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In a single-elimination tournament, these are the things that determine championships. Just ask Kansas, whose season ended without head coach Bill Self on the bench. Self had a procedure last week to fix blocked arteries and wasn’t deemed fit to return yet.

Did his absence make a distinction in a seventy two-71 loss to Arkansas?  probably. alternatively, the Razorbacks are emblematic of the way little distinction there is this season among most of those teams.

Arkansas likely has greater players who will earn a residing inside the NBA than Kansas, and yet they were a No. eight seed because they handled accidents and didn’t play as much as their capability for a whole lot of the season. Now wholesome, why now not Arkansas?

Or what about Tennessee, which spent plenty of the season taking pictures terribly but made 9 threes to overcome pink-warm Duke on Saturday? The Vols guard like loopy, however they’re no longer most of the pinnacle-50 teams within the offensive metrics. What in the event that they suddenly catch fireplace for a few games?

The analytics love UConn, which gets St. Mary’s on Sunday for a danger to stand Arkansas out in Las Vegas next week.

Gonzaga and Baylor have the 2 best offensive numbers within the united states but are mediocre on protection. UCLA’s defense is high-quality, but its offense is once in a while suspect. Or possibly that is the type of match in which one exceptional participant on an epic tear — like perhaps Indiana’s Trayce Jackson-Davis, who seemingly hasn’t neglected a shot in two months — can convey an not going group to a name.

The manner this tournament normally works, the early-spherical upsets clear the field a piece for the genuine heavyweights. The Cinderellas get all the eye for some days, however the favorites emerge through the candy 16.

however now, it’s hard to even discover who the favorites simply are — in particular whilst the 2 ultimate No. 1 seeds have a few evident health troubles. If Sasser isn’t right, the Cougars aren’t going to win from this factor ahead. And while basic No. 1 seed Alabama advanced beyond Maryland on Saturday without too much drama, it’s clean that superstar freshman Brandon Miller isn’t proper. After recording zero factors inside the first spherical against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, which the group attributed to an ongoing groin difficulty, he seemed to nevertheless be struggling towards the Terrapins.

The damage vulnerabilities attached to the pleasant gamers on the 2 pinnacle-ranked groups inside the tournament cause them to a long way from locks to even get to the very last four.

UCLA, a No. 2 seed that should be desired to come out of the West with Kansas’ loss, additionally has major harm problems. After dropping its pinnacle perimeter defender Jaylen Clark to injury past due within the ordinary season, David Singleton went down with an apparent leg injury within the last minute of the Bruins’ win over Northwestern. How a whole lot extra can UCLA face up to?

It turned into but any other reminder of the way fragile the hopes are for all of those teams. In a year while the variations are minimum on the top, each crew that receives to the candy 16 could be capable of winning its next recreation. nothing that happens from right here on out may be considered a huge marvel.

The greatness of March insanity is that every person can beat each person on a given day, which turned into validated true another time when Fairleigh Dickinson bowled over Purdue and became simply the second No. sixteen seed to topple a No. 1.

however over the direction of the tournament, the huge-name applications and elite players generally rise to the top. This doesn’t seem like one of these years. Given the unique set of circumstances that have weakened the top groups, we ought to come to be with two or three teams inside the very last four that regarded especially not going while the bracket came out.

For the closing four months, university basketball seemed like a game without a described hierarchy, setting up a event in which some thing should appear. to date, it has added right on cue.

follow u.s. nowadays sports columnist Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken

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