It’s the most wonderful time of the year to millions of people across American, and, no, I’m not talking about Christmas. With the exception of the Super Bowl, the NCAA March Madness Tournament is the most gambled on event in the USA, and the second most popular sporting event, as well.
With so many good players across the country, there are always many close games that usually go right down to the wire. This also means that we have a new NCAA basketball champion nearly every year. Last year the University of Florida took home the championship, and amazingly enough they have returned almost every player from their title winning team. Florida Gator nation may be a little worried though, because their team has stumbled down the stretch, losing three out of their last five games, and all the loses were by ten points or more.
Those stats are a genuine concern heading into the tournament, but American sports fans have a way of forgetting the past too soon. Heading into last year’s tournament the Gators dropped three out of four games, before winning six straight to take home the championship. Eerily enough, the 2008 Florida Gators have nearly the same identical record as the 2006 championship winning team did at this time. If the Gators win one conference tournament game, and go on to win the championship, both teams would have finished with a 33-6 record.
The team that Florida beat for the championship, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) will also probably make a deep run in this year’s tournament. UCLA was near the top of the national rankings all year. Unfortunately, much like their counterpart Florida, they too have struggled down the stretch, losing their last two, including a first round Pac-10 Conference tournament loss to bottom feeder University of California.
Just like UCLA, they brought back a good majority of their championship runner up team. It may be that teams with a ton of talent and a chance to win a national championship pack it in at the end of seasons. This could be an attempt to save energy going into the stretch run, or it could be they are already gearing up for a championship run, and can’t keep up the enthusiasm while playing soft teams during the final weeks of the regular seasons.
You also can’t forget about the Big Ten Conference that gives us two legitimate title contenders. Wisconsin and Ohio State both have been in the top ten the entire year. Both of them have legitimate superstars. Wisconsin has player of the year candidate Alando Tucker, and Ohio State has the best center in the country, Greg Oden. They also both play great defense, and that will get any team far into the tournament.
What about one of the mid-major conference teams? I think we’ve reached a point in college basketball where we can’t be shocked when a smaller university takes out of the big dogs. But, I don’t think we’ve reached a point where we can expect one of the smaller Cinderella schools to win the whole thing. The reasoning is that, even though the big named schools attract players who usually leave after one year, they are still overall getting better players than the small schools.
In a few years though, 5-10 years, I think a small school will win the championship. This is because the smaller schools are attracting better players when they are getting more exposure, and also players are stay at these schools for their entire four years. In these four years these players become a more cohesive unit, making it possible to beat an outstanding freshman class from Duke, for example.
These are the top contenders for the championship, with teams like North Carolina, Texas A&M, and Memphis rounding out the second tier. Part of the fun of March Madness is not knowing what to expect, so hopefully for the sake of excitement and for fans everywhere, everything I’ve said is wrong, and something totally unexpected happens.
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