2022 NCAA Tournament
- Thread starter WoadBlue
- Start date
I wonder how many people in the country picked St Peter's to reach the Elite 8.
disgusting to think that we may need that slimy bastage to take the rat out
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. One can only dream that we beat them both.
Today is National Peacock Day! Promise, no shit. There was no way they were losing tonight.
Don't ever count-out the Canes. They have experience and they have Larranaga. Kansas isn't sleeping on them!
I heard something where their starting lineup is older than the Memphis Grizzlies?
Funny thing.. Final Four could be UNC, Duke, Kansas, Villanova... by name it would sound like 4 one seeds made it.
True. But they met once in NIT... 1971, and the Heels won on their way to the NIT championship.
That’s the year they beat Dr J’s Massachusetts team in the NIT also. I remember listening to that tournament on my portable radio.
Part of the reason is that until 1975 the NCAA tournament would take only 1 team from a conference. Much of the rest is that then rather quickly the NCAA began seeding Regions equally rather than by location of schools - meaning, a UCLA could be in the East and a UNC in the West, to help make each Region roughly as tough as the others. When Regions were based on geography, the Pac champ almost always had a cake walk into the Final Four.
And then the NCAA began to make certain that the best teams from each top league would not meet each other except in the Final Four. The SEC made that happen after the NCAA set up a couple of tournaments in which ranked SEC teams were seeded to meet in the Sweet Sixteen.
UNC vs. Dook in the Final Four in Rat-face's final season would beyond huge for the NCAA.
I know many factors can play into it but I would think a UNC/Duke Final Four match up in K's last season would be up there with the most watched college game of all time.
Edit to add.. I checked and Final Four games are on TBS not CBS.
Bill Chamberlain - UNC's second black scholly player - was the MVP of that tournament if memory serves. UNC being excluded from the Madness that year was part of the impetus to expand the tournament.
I don't even want to talk about WHY the Heels were in the NIT. 🤬
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There were many ACC teams that did not win the ACC tournament that were ranked Top 15. Even when the best team during regular season won the tournament, there usually would be at least 1 other ACC team ranked Top 20. Likewise, there always was at least 1 non-champ Big Team ranked in the Top 20.
That plus the fact that many northeastern schools and smaller and/or private schools elsewhere (DePaul, Bradley, Dayton, etc.) often preferred the NIT over the NCAA meant that in many years up to the UCLA run, the NIT champ legitimately could claim to be National Champ.
The best team I saw that could not to the NCAA tournament because it did not win its conference was 1974 Maryland. The Moo-Maryland ACC final may be the best game in ACC history. Moo went on the upset UCLA in the NCAA semi and then cruise over Marquette. UCLA was fully equal to Moo, and Maryland was the 3rd best team in the country. They'd have taken Marquette as easily as Moo did.
Nobody remembers the 1974 Tar Heels because we were ranked only #12 that season. That team in the NCAA easily could have been Elite 8 and on a good night could have beaten Marquette.
0.3% of the ESPN brackets had St. Peters in the Elite 8.
NCAA Tournament Bracket Challenge 2023 | ESPN
ESPN's Tournament Challenge is back for the 2023 NCAA College Basketball Tournament! Fill out your bracket and compete against friends, ESPN personalities and celebrities.
Because the NCAA field was so limited there were a LOT of excellent teams available. As Woad noted above, it was the NCSU/Maryland game that forced the NCAA's hand on expansion...and that was the beginning of the end for the NIT.
Now...if we could just get the selection committee to stop swooning over the B1G and give the ACC it's deserved due...even in a down year.
That's the reason I am very proud of UNC's 1971 NIT championship. The NIT final four was UNC beating Dook, and GT beating St Bonaventure, which had made the NCAA final Four the previous year, and then UNC beating GT. Also in the field were Syracuse, St Johns, Michigan, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Purdue, Dayton, Louisville, UMass (with Dr. J). That's a whole lot of basketball history and a whole lot of conference 2nd place teams.
