2024-25 College Basketball Thread

[I Should Coco]

Now that's an office pool!



https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/24/ber...buffetts-march-madness-bracket-challenge.html

I tossed my $5 entry into my wife's pool at work. Ten players, she's the only woman and never really watches college hoops.

So of course she gets 28 out of 32 first round games correct and 13 out of 16 in Round 2.

It's been mentioned to me a time or two in the past couple days …

 

[Retired_Scribe]

The first-ever Crown Basketball Tournament just released its field. $500K in NIL money goes to the winner. It's a field with very solid names.

College Basketball Crown bracket 2025: Tournament schedule, dates, times as USC, Villanova headline field

The bracket is set for the inaugural College Basketball Crown tournament

www.cbssports.com

This new event is a major reason why the NIT field only had a couple of schools from Power Conferences. And probably a reason why the NIT effed up, invited South Alabama, then uninvited South Alabama an hour later. After the coach had told his players they were in the NIT.

 

[tapintoamerica]

This new event is a major reason why the NIT field only had a couple of schools from Power Conferences. And probably a reason why the NIT effed up, invited South Alabama, then uninvited South Alabama an hour later. After the coach had told his players they were in the NIT.

Two of the teams are in the Crown despite having whacked their coaches. What a mess.

 

[Roscablo]

I tossed my $5 entry into my wife's pool at work. Ten players, she's the only woman and never really watches college hoops.

So of course she gets 28 out of 32 first round games correct and 13 out of 16 in Round 2.

It's been mentioned to me a time or two in the past couple days …

This has come up before, but when my wife was in med school they did a class bracket. She had about as perfect a bracket as you can get, like seven of eight Elite Eight teams, all the Final Four, the champ. It was nuts. It was when Carmelo Anthony's Syracuse won. That was in the infancy of like ESPN pools (it existed), but they did it on paper. I am convinced if she was in something like that she would have been very high up the leaderboard.

All her friends were convinced I filled out the bracket with my sportswriter roots and all. Yeah, no. Never been that close to right (and she never has been since). I know a lot of luck goes into that stuff, but still not really sure how she did it.

 

[Retired_Scribe]

Posh Alexander makes an interesting case study. He was Butler's starting point guard last season and would've been again this year. But late in the transfer window, he ends up deciding to leave for Dayton, which purportedly gave him $500k was more than what Butler could do (supposedly about $300k).

He ended up coming off the bench for the Flyers and minutes went down as the season went on.

I can't blame him for taking the money, especially as a young father, but I firmly believe if he had stayed and started at Butler, he would have done a lot more for his overseas earning potential.

Also, Butler not being able to match Dayton was embarrassing, but AD Barry Collier, who retired after last season, was stuck in the 1980s on his thinking with NIL and transfers.

A UC San Diego player who was on the team last season but transferred to USC for a bigger NIL payday. He played sparingly. The Athletic had a good story on him watching his former team play against Michigan in the first round.

 

[poindexter]

A UC San Diego player who was on the team last season but transferred to USC for a bigger NIL payday. He played sparingly. The Athletic had a good story on him watching his former team play against Michigan in the first round.

A UC San Diego transfer watches the NCAA Tournament team he left: ‘Is the grass greener?’

Bryce Pope spent four years building UC San Diego and transferred to USC. We watched the Tritons' first-round heartbreaker with him.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Retired_Scribe]

A UC San Diego transfer watches the NCAA Tournament team he left: ‘Is the grass greener?’

Bryce Pope spent four years building UC San Diego and transferred to USC. We watched the Tritons' first-round heartbreaker with him.

www.nytimes.com

Thanks for the link. I was too lazy to chase it down.

 

[Roscablo]

A UC San Diego player who was on the team last season but transferred to USC for a bigger NIL payday. He played sparingly. The Athletic had a good story on him watching his former team play against Michigan in the first round.

I wonder how many players don't find any spots? There have to be some. Or a lot.

 

[DanOregon]

As long as some agent writes you a check up front, they are the one's "eating" the NIL cash. Im sure there are some players who "enter the portal" after the coach tells them their scholarship won't be renewed, they'll likely end up playing at a lower level. You are just dumb if you enter the portal without a landing spot lined up at this point.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

I wonder how many players don't find any spots? There have to be some. Or a lot.

There's A LOT. There were almost 1,800 players in the portal on day one. There's roughly 4,700 scholarships in D-I. The math means a lot of these guys are going to be left without a chair when the music stops. I know of a perfectly solid mid-major glue guy who went portaling as the pandemic started and ended up sitting out the next season and playing for a Canadian school in '21-22.

 

[Pickleballgolds]

Two of the teams are in the Crown despite having whacked their coaches. What a mess.

Does anyone care? I think not. Come June you can ask 100 people on the street who won his thing and 99 won't know. I'm glad St. Francis (tactfully) called out college sports for the cesspool it has become.

 

[Batman]

This new event is a major reason why the NIT field only had a couple of schools from Power Conferences. And probably a reason why the NIT effed up, invited South Alabama, then uninvited South Alabama an hour later. After the coach had told his players they were in the NIT.

The South Alabama situation had to do with the the CBI, not the Crown.