Running 2022-23 NCAA Basketball Thread

Cronin is a good coach but he's a whiny little fella.

 

FAU has gotten a tiny fraction of the pub that other mid majors received when making a final eight run, like Loyola, St. Peters, George Mason... And Cal State Fullerton

 

That's what happens when two-thirds of your run is against a March marshmallow and a No. 16 seed.

 

I think part of it is that FAU was ranked at one point this season. They're a 9 seed. It's not that stunning that they've made it this far, considering how the bracket broke.

The others you referenced came a little more out of nowhere.

 

The other part of it is CBS and friends love a little madness in the first round or two. But by the second week, they want brand names.

FAU is not a school that makes random, non-hard-core basketball fans tune in. UCLA and Michigan State are.

Personaly, I love seeing underdogs make a long run in the tournament and climbing on their bandwagon, but not sure how many other fans do that.

 

Good points. A better comparison would be how Wichita State was handled in 2013? They did beat a No. 1 seed in the second round, though.

 

Did anyone see the WBB Memphis-BGSU handshake punchout? Yikes.

 

Excluding the "First Four" - which is the worst round of March Madness? I'll hang up and listen.

 

All of it.

 

Hey, the Vols lasted a round longer than everyone thought they would.

 

Sister Jean explains the Loyola hype. St Peter’s was a 15 that dispatched one of the five biggest brands in the sport, Kentucky. Mason beat another of the blue bloods, UNC, in the 2nd round.
Less important but possibly a factor: Florida Atlantic has a football team that has given the school some exposure. Not much and not long but some. George Mason had zero national identity before its run. So it got attention because of a basic need for reporters — I was one of them — to write a story explaining who Mason was and offering a brief history of the institution.

 

I think it's often the Sweet 16. It's usually the round when the underdog darlings who made it through the first weekend run out of gas and their story ends. The games are only at night, so you don't have quite the spectacle of all day basketball. Nor do you have the stakes of some of the other rounds — generating the buzz of an early-round upset, or achieving the immortality of reaching the Final Four by winning a regional final. Even the great games get lost in the wash of who's going to the Final Four a day or two later.
The games might be great, like last night, but it's still the middle of the tournament — which is appropriate, because it's the middle child of all the rounds.
The same dynamic applies to the Final Four itself, but that round gets a slight bump because just getting there is such a lifetime achievement that any success is a bonus for about 320 of the 330-something Division I programs.