The road between glory and indignity is brutally skinny in March.
One bounce of a ball might be the distinction between a contract extension and a visit to the unemployment line. The distinction between by no means having to purchase a drink in a school city once more, or having to hit the switch portal earlier than the crew bus arrives again on campus.
One week in the past, there was buzz that Kevin Keatts was a loss to Louisville away from being fired. 5 days later he was headed to the NCAA event with a hefty bonus and an automated 2-year extension to his contract.
March is fickle, which makes it powerful on each fan base affected.
Listed below are the 5 that probably the most to realize and probably the most to lose over the three weeks forward:
1. Purdue
I don’t assume No. 1 on this record is up for dialogue.
That is the 12 months. This needs to be the 12 months. If it isn’t the 12 months, Purdue followers would possibly simply begin getting actually into miniatures or bonsai timber in the course of the winter months transferring ahead.
Purdue has 28 convention championships to its title, it has 35 NCAA event appearances since 1969, it has one of the vital passionate fan bases in all of school basketball, and it’s about to have the game’s first back-to-back Naismith Award winner since 1983.
Understandably, there’s been extra discuss main as much as this event about what the Boilermakers don’t have.
Purdue has by no means received a nationwide championship, and the Boilermakers haven’t been to a Remaining 4 since 1980. However the fan base’s angst main as much as this March has rested extra with this system’s current historical past.
In each event since 2016, Matt Painter’s crew has been a high 5 seed. That string of normal season success has produced little reward in the course of the sport’s most vital month. Purdue has superior to the Elite Eight simply as soon as beneath Painter, a soul-crushing additional time loss to eventual nationwide champion Virginia in 2019. Within the final three tournaments, the Boilermakers have been eradicated by a 13-seed, a 15-seed and, most famously, a 16-seed a 12 months in the past.
Within the 12 months which have transpired since Fairleigh Dickinson shocked each Purdue and the sports activities world, Boilermaker followers have been comforted by a single thought: The one different time this occurred, the embarrassed social gathering — one with a prolonged status for March failures — turned proper round and received their first nationwide championship a 12 months later.
This 12 months’s Purdue crew has mimicked that 2018-19 Virginia squad in so some ways.
First, simply as Tony Bennett was in a position to do six years in the past, Painter was in a position to persuade almost each key contributor from final season’s Purdue crew to return for an additional 12 months. Neither crew made any drastic modifications to model or philosophy, and each dominated their convention in a trend almost an identical to what they’d achieved the season earlier than. After successful twin convention championships the season earlier than, each 2019 and 2024 Purdue adopted up their common season convention championships with an upset loss within the convention event semifinals.
Virginia’s win complete getting into the 2019 NCAA event: 29.
Purdue’s win complete getting into the 2024 NCAA event: 29.
If Purdue occurs to be trailing its first spherical sport at halftime, Boilermaker followers ought to most likely really feel comforted, not alarmed. Simpler mentioned than achieved.
2. Tennessee
The one fan base inside shouting distance of Purdue in terms of teetering the nice line between “determined for a breakthrough” and “one loss away from a whole and complete breakdown” is Tennessee. Naturally, UT is the No. 2 seed in Purdue’s Midwest Area.
Comparatively talking, the Volunteers have an especially proud school hoops custom. They’ve received 16 convention championships (the latest being locked up earlier this month), superior to the Candy 16 of the NCAA event 9 instances, and have extra all-time wins than applications like Virginia, Georgetown and Marquette.
From “The Fearless 5” period to the “Ernie and Bernie Present” to the trendy success beneath Bruce Pearl and Rick Barnes, there’s lots for UT followers to thump their chests about.
The chest thumping involves an abrupt halt when the subject of school basketball’s largest stage is introduced up.
Discover any record of “greatest school basketball groups to by no means make a Remaining 4” from any website throughout any time interval, and Tennessee is definite to be at or close to the highest.
Not solely have the Volunteers by no means performed in a nationwide semifinal, however solely as soon as have they superior to the NCAA event’s Elite Eight. In 2010, as a 6-seed, their goals of lastly breaking via to the primary weekend of April got here crashing down with a soul-crushing 70-69 loss to Michigan State within the Midwest Regional last.
A season in the past, it appeared like Tennessee is likely to be poised to interrupt via. The Volunteers boasted not simply probably the most stifling protection within the nation, however one of many high adjusted defensive effectivity marks within the Ken Pomeroy period, which dates again to the start of the century.
What Barnes’ crew didn’t have was an equally potent offense. UT’s backcourt lacked a pure scorer it may flip to throughout dry spells, a difficulty which grew to become doubly troubling when place to begin guard Zakai Zeigler re-tore his ACL simply earlier than the calendar flipped from February to March.
Regardless of all this, Tennessee earned a No. 4 seed for the NCAA event and bullied stylish Remaining 4 decide Duke out of the Large Dance within the second spherical with a dominant 65-52 victory. With the highest two seeds within the East Area out earlier than the event’s second weekend, it regarded just like the seas to the Remaining 4 could have lastly parted for UT. As an alternative, the dearth of a constant scoring risk doomed them one final time. Whereas the Volunteer protection saved high-flying Florida Atlantic largely in examine, the offense shot a woeful 33.3 p.c from the sphere and misfired on 17-of-23 three-point makes an attempt because the crew noticed a 27-22 halftime lead flip right into a 62-55 defeat.
Quick ahead 12 months and hope ought to as soon as once more springing everlasting in Knoxville.
The Volunteers are the third greatest defensive crew within the nation, Zeigler is wholesome and taking part in the perfect basketball of his school profession, and Barnes addressed his program’s scoring points by going out and getting a First Group All-American in Dalton Knecht who simply is likely to be the perfect pure scorer within the sport. UT is a 2-seed in a reasonably open area the place the 1-seed has had simply as many current postseason struggles as they’ve.
You’ll need to forgive UT followers have been sustaining an unjustified degree of pessimism. It’s not simply their program which appears cursed this time of 12 months.
Solely three lively coaches in Division-I’ve extra profession wins connected to their title than Barnes, who resurrected a Tennessee program that had received only one SEC event since 1979 and only one regular-season title since 2008 when he arrived in 2015. Barring one thing remarkably unexpected, this would be the seventh straight 12 months he’s led the Volunteers a to a successful document, the sixth time he’s taken them to the NCAA event, and the third straight season he’s guided them to no less than 20 wins.
However then there are the struggles in March, a listing which Tennessee followers know by coronary heart at thus level. The buzzer-beating loss to Loyola in 2018, the additional time loss to Purdue in 2019, falling to 12-seed Oregon State in 2021 after which to 11-seed Michigan a 12 months later, after which the heartbreak in opposition to Florida Atlantic final season. Toss within the details that Barnes’ final six NCAA event groups didn’t make it out of the opening weekend and that he’s 1-12 all-time within the Large Dance in opposition to better-seeded groups, and yeah, you may see how a status has been shaped.
The narrative is all the time the narrative in school basketball, till it isn’t. Tennessee has the whole lot essential to win no less than 4 consecutive video games within the weeks forward. If it doesn’t, everybody with a creamsicle wardrobe will say they need to have seen it coming.
3. Kentucky
It’s been 9 years for the reason that final time John Calipari led Kentucky to the Remaining 4, and 12 years for the reason that solely time the Wildcats have lower down the nets this century.
In “Kentucky years,” these numbers could as properly be 25 and 30 years.
What was as soon as the right marriage between Calipari and Large Blue Nation has dissolved in recent times. Each loss has elicited cries that the person who was as soon as the determine in school basketball hasn’t discovered a technique to (or has merely refused to) evolve with the instances. Calipari has countered with rumors of a possible departure over a number of offseasons, a not so refined reminder that if Lexington doesn’t need him anymore, there are many locations that may open each their arms and their pocketbooks.
On the coronary heart of this cold and warm relationship are the failures of the final handful of years.
There was a soul-crushing Elite Eight loss to North Carolina on the buzzer in 2017, a missed alternative with a wide-open South Area in 2018, and one other heartbreaker in a regional last in opposition to Auburn in 2019. However what has actually raised the stakes for Kentucky this season is what the the Wildcats have achieved within the post-COVID world.
Kentucky received simply 9 video games in 2020-21, a incontrovertible fact that despatched some Wildcat followers right into a state of hysteria and left others brushing it off because the product of a season doused in unprecedented ranges of bizarre. Then there was the beautiful first spherical NCAA event loss to Saint Peter’s in 2022, Cal’s first opening spherical defeat at UK. A 12 months later, the Wildcats struggled (by their requirements) to a 6-seed within the dance, the place they defeated Windfall earlier than falling to Marquis Nowell and third-seeded Kansas State.
All instructed, Kentucky has received only a single sport within the NCAA event since 2019. Its lack of success within the SEC event — the place it has additionally received only one sport for the reason that pandemic — has not helped issues both.
All might be made properly with a run over the weeks forward.
Kentucky followers are in love (much more than common) with their 2023-24 Wildcats. UK performs an absurdly enjoyable model of basketball, one which has made the Cats the second highest-scoring crew within the nation. They function a veteran main scorer in Antonio Reeves, what seems to be a can’t miss future NBA star in Rob Dillingham, and the product of Kentucky basketball royalty within the homegrown Reed Sheppard,
It’s the most-loved crew the Bluegrass State has thrown its eight behind in fairly a while.
For now.
The weeks forward are sure to throw the Calipari-BBN relationship in considered one of two excessive instructions. Both “Swaggy Cal” is formally again and the Wildcats are going to win a number of nationwide titles over the subsequent hanful of years, or the Cal period has run its course, and the person who as soon as set the Commonwealth on hearth must discover a new residence for his last act.
There will probably be no in between.
4. Arizona
Arizona followers have skilled three sorts of torture over the past decade.
First, there have been the back-to-back Elite Eight losses to Wisconsin in 2014 and 2015, those that had head coach Sean Miller’s capacity to “recover from the hump” current as one of many greatest questions within the sport.
Second, there was this system being in the course of the FBI’s probe into school basketball, an occasion which left U of L in an unprecedented state of uncertainty, and which in the end led to Miller’s ouster.
Most not too long ago, there was Arizona’s quick and elite degree of normal season success beneath new head coach Tommy Lloyd … after which its embarrassing NCAA event flops.
The Wildcats earned a No. 1 seed in Lloyd’s first season on the helm in 2022. After struggling to an additional time win over TCU within the second spherical, Arizona was manhandled within the Candy 16 by a more durable and extra bodily fifth-seeded Houston crew. It obtained worse a 12 months later, when ‘Zona was shocked within the first spherical by No. 15 seed Princeton.
Now, after one more Pac-12 championship, Arizona is again on the 2-seed line once more. Lloyd deservedly appears to have the fan base’s full backing, however a 3rd straight loss to a determined underdog — particularly if it comes within the first weekend for a second straight 12 months — would possibly ship Tucson right into a full-blown state of panic.
Two instances you may clarify away. 3 times is a development.
5. Duke
Don’t let anybody let you know any in a different way: It is a large month for Jon Scheyer.
Taking on for arguably the best school basketball of all-time on the program that at present serves as the face of the game was all the time going to be a problem. Thus far the early returns on Scheyer have been … blended.
He actually hasn’t been dangerous sufficient to warrant a mutiny or something like that.
After an uneven debut common season, Scheyer led Duke to an ACC event championship and a 5-seed within the Large Dance, the place they have been a stylish decide to make a run to the Remaining 4. After a dominant win over Oral Roberts within the first spherical, the Dukies have been manhandled by Tennessee (65-52) two days later.
That efficiency was rapidly forgiven as Scheyer landed each the nation’s top-rated recruiting courses and commitments from his high 2022-23 performers to return to Durham for an additional 12 months. The assembled roster made Duke quite a lot of folks’s preseason decide to win the nationwide title, and the No. 2 crew within the Related Press preseason high 25 ballot.
They haven’t fairly lived as much as that billing.
Whereas the pitchforks and torches aren’t out but, Blue Satan followers are no less than a bit stressed after a daily season that featured eight losses, a sweep by the hands of arch-rival North Carolina, after which a one-and-done efficiency within the ACC event.
For the second straight season, Duke will probably be a 4-seed within the Large Dance. A visit to the second weekend will probably be greeted with a golf clap and hope that even higher days are proper across the nook. An elimination in spherical one or two and the discuss that taking a flyer on a 30-something who had by no means been a head coach earlier than was an error in judgment will develop from a murmur to a shout.