March Madness 2025

[RedStickBrew]

22 minutes ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

Am I being petty? Maybe. But I'm glad that on Saturday Storr & Hepburn will be playing the same # of minutes as I will.

I had the same exact thoughts. Chucky and AJ get to cheer on their old teammates the rest of this tournament 

[CheeseheadInQC]

22 minutes ago, Cool Hand Lucroy said:

 Love to see Drake finally getting a win in the big bracket. That program and that league deserve it, wherever McCollum ends up.

MVC! MVC! MVC!

[LouisEly]

17 hours ago, RedStickBrew said:

Kansas v Arkansas has been a fun one to watch so far. Lots of scoring 

The last four minutes of that game was probably the worst four minutes of college basketball that I've ever watched.  Looked like they didn't even belong in their conference tournament, much less the NCAA.

[RedStickBrew]

8 minutes ago, LouisEly said:

The last four minutes of that game was probably the worst four minutes of college basketball that I've ever watched.  Looked like they didn't even belong in their conference tournament, much less the NCAA.

Yeah. I posted that at half. Kansas switched to a zone in the second half and Arkansas was clueless as to how to attack it. I agree the whole second half was pretty abysmal 

[igor67]

Alabama only up 1 point with 7:30 to go

[igor67]

And now down a point

[owbc]

Looks like the SEC was overrated in football and basketball. I’m sure the pundits will write this off because they “beat each other up” in the regular season or something. 

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

1 hour ago, owbc said:

Looks like the SEC was overrated in football and basketball. I’m sure the pundits will write this off because they “beat each other up” in the regular season or something. 

I hope this proves true, but it's still very possible we look up and have 4 of the final 8 (or even Final Four) teams from the SEC. All the clearly good teams are winning, and Vandy looks in good shape as an underdog (a win for them would set up an all-SEC round of 32 matchup with Bama), and Ole Miss is currently hammering UNC.

When you have 14 teams in the field, you have a lot of room to lose.

[Jim French Stepstool]

1 hour ago, owbc said:

Looks like the SEC was overrated in football and basketball. I’m sure the pundits will write this off because they “beat each other up” in the regular season or something. 

I think when they're at their best, the top 4 or so are pretty elite teams capable of beating anyone. But when you got down to a Texas, a Vandy, even an Oklahoma there's room for debate. I think fourteen from one league is really dicey.

[young guns]

UNC almost came back.  Had it at 2 with about a minute left.  Just like Clemson, dug too much of a hole on the first half.

[RedStickBrew]

On 3/19/2025 at 11:45 AM, Cool Hand Lucroy said:

I'm more optimistic on Ole Miss than lots of folks, I think, mainly because of Beard's track record in the NCAAT. I also think last night was way more about SDSU than UNC. North Carolina has not beaten a single team as good as Ole Miss this year. They beat UCLA on a neutral. That's as close as they get. I'd take Ole Miss over UCLA on a neutral.

 

Good call. Ole Miss needed all of that 900 point halftime lead as they nearly let it slip away but held on

[adambr2]

Honestly, other than the usual 12/5 line upsets (which has seemingly been a thing since the beginning of time for some reason), not much Madness so far in this tournament.

[HarryDoyle]

1 hour ago, adambr2 said:

Honestly, other than the usual 12/5 line upsets (which has seemingly been a thing since the beginning of time for some reason), not much Madness so far in this tournament.

Yeah, nothing is really considered an upset until you get to those 1 to 4 seeds, and so far they are undefeated. I thought Arizona was the weak top 4 seed in the tourney and they're up 10 at halftime. 

[zurch1818]

Random pointless comment: In my work pool, I'm in 1st out of 42 teams. In my family pool with the exact same bracket, I'm in last out of 9 teams.

I have no idea what the scoring difference is between the pools, but I feel it must have something to do with upsets.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

I think the top 4 seed lines were unusually strong this year, and the 13-16 lines unusually weak. Perhaps having to do with transfer portal just making the Power 5 leagues a lot deeper. Looking at the set matchups for Sat/Sun, you'd think there'd be at least one or two true surprises. Not a lot of fluky wins in the final 32 so far.

Xavier-Illinois might be the game of the round. Something to stay up for anyway.

[Jim French Stepstool]

3 hours ago, adambr2 said:

Honestly, other than the usual 12/5 line upsets (which has seemingly been a thing since the beginning of time for some reason), not much Madness so far in this tournament.

Maybe not in the final results, but some good storylines within some of these games. Like you kinda felt Robert Morris was gonna run out of gas, but that was a terrific game to watch.

Troy looked like they coulda stuck around until crunch time vs Kentucky except they just couldn't shoot.

Like you said, 12-5 isn't headline news. But I came away really impressed with Nico Medved & Colorado State.

It's fun to watch a low seed that truly comes out aggressive & fearless. So far, that's been Bryant.

 

[HarryDoyle]

Not only are there no major upsets, but most of these games also aren't even close. Must be a really top-heavy year for college basketball.

[RedStickBrew]

The lack of upsets are going to lead to some big time matchups in the S16/E8 on a positive note

[Jim French Stepstool]

Has a conference ever started out 8-0 in the tourney?

[Oxy]

There's been enough interesting games overall, but the lack of games coming down to the wire in the last 3 minutes has been disappointing.  Hopefully the drama ratches up this weekend.

[RedStickBrew]

Maybe we some upsets today. McNeese, Arkansas and Drake are all double digit seeds I would give some chance of winning

[Samurai Bucky]

I didn't mention this much during the Wisconsin / Montana game because my Cardinal-colored glasses were in full bloom.  So, I'll change the context.

It almost seems like teams that don't play bully ball are getting penalized.  Maybe I just watched a handful of games where it was blatantly obvious guys were getting destroyed underneath or thrown out of the way during a rebound.  If you play sound defense, fine, but you can get extremely physical and that is ok.  Maybe I'm noticing it more this year than in years past.

Obviously the officials swallow the whistles more in the big dance.  What I would hate to see is a team like Wisconsin makes it to the National Championship game.  They are performing really well at halftime, but then the whistles come out in the second half -- against the Badgers.  Hypothetically, they could be playing a blue blood with, maybe, a hall of fame coach.  Not that we would ever see something like that... 😉

To be serious, I would like to see consistency.  That's all.

[HarryDoyle]

2 hours ago, RedStickBrew said:

Maybe we some upsets today. McNeese, Arkansas and Drake are all double digit seeds I would give some chance of winning

Don't count on McNeese to change anything from the past two days anymore. Purdue already has this one sewn up at halftime.

[RedStickBrew]

Good start to Arkansas/St. John’s. I presume Pitino knows he can switch to zone D at any time which Arkansas had trouble with v Kansas. 

[Jim French Stepstool]

There's no other games going on this afternoon opposite St Johns-Arkansas. So rather than watch commercials, during the time outs I flipped around & found 'On the Waterfront', a classic flick from the 50s featuring the slimy longshoremans' union, corruption, money-skimming, scandal, & a healthy dose of "I din't see nuthin". Then I flip back to Calipari & Pitino.

Hard to tell the difference.