BOOBle Watch: The Girls Guide to College Basketball
Ball is life, and don’t think we forgot it. It’s March, and lo! the coronaniversary approaches which means, it’s also time for March Madness, aka a month-long flurry of basketball practically 24/7, starting with the conference championships this week. Truly hard to believe but this week last year Boyfriend and I WERE LITERALLY IN BOX SEATS INSIDE MSG watching the Hoyas boof it and lose to St John’s (well, that part remains believable), when the reality star who formerly ran this country announced at halftime that the borders were closing. I clutched my precious bottle of hand sanitizer in horror. For a brief, fleeting moment, we both dreamed of working from home and watching March Madness unfold in real-time, without the constraints of office work…before we realized that obviously, March Madness was going to be canceled. Whomp. On the plus side, I didn’t have to be sad about the Hoyas not making the tournament since it didn’t exist!
Hoyas be like
But this year, the SHOW MUST GO ON! mostly because, well, the NCAA’s BILLION DOLLAR yearly income depends largely on this tournament. So, how does this work normally and how is it going to work this year? Fret not, here’s your bball primer.
Dancing Lessons
Pictured : you reading this blog learning
There are two main ways to qualify for the 68-team National Tournament selection aka the Big Dance. First, the ‘easier’ way: any team that wins their conference’s tournament gets an “automatic bid” and therefore a berth in the tournament. Usually, this will be the team that’s been dominating conference play all season, but not always. We’ll be seeing this play out over this next week for most conferences. Half the field (32 teams- yes, 32, I’ll explain in a minute) is made up of these conference winners (except this year, because the Ivy League suspended all sports and won’t be fielding a team, so we’ll have 31 automatic bids).The second way to get in: impress the Selection Committee (a group of, you guessed it, mostly old white dudes). How? WELL THAT IS THE MYSTERY. Jk, but, not really. The Committee considers lots of different elements : what conference you play in, how strong your schedule is (i.e did you actually play anyone good?), win-loss record (in and out of conference), what they call Q1 wins (which are wins against top teams) and of course, the secret Krabby Patty ingredient which remains a mystery. So while only the Committee really knows who will be in or out, we have some solid indicators to help us predict. Teams that might make it but aren’t a sure thing are referred to as being “On the Bubble” (a term that really has never been more relevant than this year!). The Committee decides the rest of the field and how they will be seeded on Selection Sunday, once all the conference tournaments are played out. The bracket and seeding I’ll get into next week because it’s a lot to handle. One thing to notice- you’re probably being like “wait she said 68 teams but then she said half is 32 but that’s not right she can’t do math” well you’re right I can’t do math BUT I can do basketball. In an effort to expand the tournament (read: make more money), the NCAA added a “First Four” play in round before the main tourney bracket. These teams (usually 16 and 8/9 seeds) are playing for the last 4 slots, so the actual official field is 64 teams. it’s dumb, whatever.
Who’s dancing?
Now, I’m not going to go through and preview ALL the conferences and ALL the teams because like, who has the time, in THIS economy??? (also, like, do any of you care about the Colonial conference? Didn’t think so.) My goal here is to give you enough info so you can properly react when the bracket is announced next week.
Teams to watch: These are teams that are definitely making it in (whether via an automatic bid or selection) and should be on your radar as top teams going in to the bracket(not that having a high seed is everything… as you’ll soon discover).We’ll get more in depth into their profiles next week, but for now, just try to remember their names : Gonzaga (go Jesuit schools!), Michigan (Go Blue!), Baylor, Illinois.
Other contenders : These are other teams that could reasonably be considered contenders in the tourney. One takeaway from this year is that corona has made conference play truly wild and because of that, some traditionally good teams (Duke, UNC, Kentucky) aren’t even ranked and others (Kansas, UVA) are wayyy down the list. West Virginia (country roads take me home!), Villanova (Big East baby!) , THE Ohio State, basically any team in the Big 10 (Iowa, Wisconsin!) and a good amount in the Big 12 conference
Should make it in but can’t f*ck around : These teams won’t be particularly well seeded, but they should be able to make it in barring any atrocious screw-ups .UNC, Louisville, Rutgers, UMD(terps!)
On the bubble : These teams are gonna have to pull out all the stops to get in. Duke is under .500 right now, so they basically need to win their next 5 games and the ACC tournament to get in (wild!!).but I don’t care, because I hate Duke (breathe if you hate Duke). The only team I hate more than Duke is Cuse, which fits since they’re also on the Bubble. Xavier, Seton Hall and St John’s all had a bad 2 weeks and need to right the ship asap. We are #TeamAnyBigEastTeam even if they are conference rivals as the more teams we can get into the tourney, the better our conference is ranked and it’s just good for gameplay moving forward. Michigan State just lost to archrival Michigan, sending them back to the Bubble (unfamiliar territory for this blue blood team but they have sucked this season), however as they say, never bet against Tom Izzo in March. (Editing to add- proving this point, State then won against top-ranked Michigan Sunday). In the American conference, Wichita (the shockers! like, shocks of wheat lol), SMU (still recovering from NCAA sanctions) and Memphis have work to do, because the American conference isn’t super well respected by the Committee.
This is HARDLY an exhaustive list, so we really recommend tuning in to conference play this week to get a better sense of what’s out there. The good news is that basketball is easy to follow and much shorter than football. Remember, if I can go from knowing nothing in 2010 to raking in bracket pool money in 2011, you can too! Dream big!!
