Running 2022-23 NCAA Basketball Thread

I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who caught that LOL

 

Those ads are everywhere if you ever listen to tournament games on the radio.

 

Good luck getting any P5s to play them next year

 

I am in a pool at work where you choose one team per day. Out of the 167 people in the pool, 15 were left going into today. 12 took KSU and I’m one of the 3 who took Gonzaga. Needless to say, not rooting for UConn.

 

Ten years ago, Florida Gulf Coast went on the map from the Sweet 16 run. It was only a school for 15 years at that point… but enrollment shot up, average GPA went up and kids from all over the southeast looked at it. “Dunk City” became the branding.

FAU might have a similar fate and I’ll be curious to see what happens. It’s largely a school with older/non-traditional students. I would estimate about 11,000 students who are freshman directly after high school.

It serves a very specific student demo. Lots of kids who are the first in their family to go to college. Lots of kids who may struggle on their standardized tests — that’s largely why my daughter is there. (The challenges my family has overcome have left a negative impact in some areas — largely her anxiety at pressure moments and standardized tests turned out to be her poison, so much so that lots of schools ignored her 3.9 GPA and history of volunteering and working. However, the schools that didn’t require an SAT/ACT all welcomed her and get her lots of merit offers.)

It’s truly a school that serves a lot of college students who don’t get into even the other Florida schools - South Florida (deceptively hard to get into), Central Florida, even Florida International. Lots of people here look down FAU’s academics but, the longer I live here, the more I appreciate the role it plays. It gives a path for a lot of young people who didn’t have the mom with the Yukon, the Yeti and the yoga pants doing all their work for them.

It’s been an experience for us with these two children I have. One is finishing up an engineering degree in 3.5 years (dad brag: he could have gotten into any school in the nation except for half the Ivies, Stanford, Cal and a few others but chose to play D3 soccer for a year and then transferred to a Power 5 after “retiring” from concussions.)

My daughter, though, battled for every 10 points on her underwhelming SAT. She wakes up many days wondering if she’s good enough. She hears the doubting voice in her head during every test she takes at FAU.

But she’s found her home there. With three other women in a four-room dorm. They hang out over holidays in Tampa or Miami. They go to the beach on Sunday mornings. She loves waiting tables in downtown Boca as she tries to figure it all out.

I imagine there are lots of similar stories on that campus. It’s great to see that this might, perhaps, bring a real sense of spirit to a campus that often clears out on Friday afternoons.

 

It’s also next to the campus pool which usually has a much higher attendance.

 

I suspect it will be much fuller next season.

 

Unless it’s a weekend game. FAU is a ghost town after 3 pm on Fridays.

 

From your description, FAU sounds like a great school. Too bad DeSantis and/or Florida will find a way to fuck it up.

Isn't that the place the walkway over a highway collapsed? Or was that FIU?