One Shining Moment- 2023 March Madness Winners & Losers
Image courtesy of @jonathanhusky14
Blink and you missed it- we simply cannot believe the big dance is over already. So many hours of prep, all to be undone in the first round- now we have to wait until NEXT YEAR to feel all those feelings again? How!!! How can we carry on!!!! More on that at the end of the post, but first lets RECAP on some winners & losers of this years dances:
Winner: DOGS
In case you missed it, UCONN did the THING and won the whole tourney!!!! Of course the day of the final a bunch of reporters were like “ uh yeah, uconn has been good all year they just had like one bad month but actually they’ve always been good and we all already knew that” but you know what? I didn’t see ANY OF Y’ALL PICKING CT TO GO ALL THE WAY. Bandwagon fans… well of course you are welcome on board I’m just saying that don’t act like you knew it was coming. Who DID know it was coming, besides coach Dan Hurley (who has really rebooted this program and coached them to an excellent season)? Our precious pups Zoya and Peroni, who took Uconn to the MOON and the latter of whom won not 1 but 2 separate bracket pools. Peroni is the next Air Bud?? Anyway the final wasn’t that interesting because UCONN really ran away with it but some highlights to note:
Over the course of the tournament, UCONN beat teams by an average of TWENTY (20) Points. They won every single game with double digit leads. This is why when SDSU got within 5 I was like OH SHIT but actually UCONN said, nope we ballin and got it in hand.
Jonathan the husky is really cute
Adam Sanogo, star of UCONN and just like, very large dude, is from Mali and speaks 4 languages! He also was (is) fasting for Ramadan during this tournament so like… yes king all glory to Allah!
Last time UCONN made a run (and won) the tournament was in 2014, and Moe’s Southwest Grill was their official burrito sponsor, and every time they won a game Moe’s would knock $1 off the price of the burrito, and then when they won the title they gave out FREE BURRITOS. I don’t know if they’ve decided to do that again but @Moes: it really stuck with me and I’ve been a strong supporter ever since, PLEASE contact us for sponsorship opportunities.
The UCONN Men have won FIVE titles now as a program, and though that pales in comparison to their lady husky counterparts’ successes, it does tie them with Duke & Indiana in overall wins. Either UCONN is out in round 1 or they win it all, there is no in between!
Loser: 1 Seeds
We told you all coming in that the field was WIDE OPEN and that most pundits did NOT think there was a clear cut favorite to win the dance this year, and boy oh boy did THAT turn out to be true. Truly the opposite of 2022, where the whole bracket was straight chalk and blue bloods. Despite the fact that everyone was desperate to fall all over Alabama (could not be us, sorry but we refused to support), this was not a tournament for the big dogs (well, it was, but only for one specific type of big dog, who, again, everyone wrote off!!!!). Purdue lost in the first round, Kansas & Houston lost in the round of 32, and Alabama didn’t make it out of the sweet sixteen- the highest seed remaining by the time we got to the Elite Eight was no. 2 Texas, but the rest were 4s, 5s, or 6s. Straight up that is unheard of. This also means a big loser was PROFIT MARGINS, because as much as the Aztecchies at home in San Diego enjoyed cheering on their team to the final, these smaller schools do not have the massive audience that comes with a Duke, or a UNC. Oh well! Maybe if we invested in smaller schools and didn’t just funnel all the talent into blue blooded programs then they wouldn’t have this problem!
Winner: Bayou Barbie
On the Women’s Side, the tournament was ALSO as exciting as ever, and arguably I can put all of us as winners because we got to watch the likes of Caitlyn Clark (a freakin generational talent…the girl was insane), and Aliyah Boston (who has put up two straight years of incredible play) and Angel Reese (aka the Bayou Barbie) who put LSU on her shoulders and won the whole ball game. With presumptive favorites (literally everyone thought they were going to repeat) South Carolina knocked out by Iowa in the final four (a game that was BAT SHIT CRAZY maybe the best game of basketball I have ever seen and I? WORK FOR THE NBA), the finale was ANYONE’S GAME but the Lady Tigers put it to BED. Angel Reese (and her intense eyelashes and her 40+ NIL deals) put on a stunner of a performance and (despite the referees best efforts to steal the attention away with aggressively bad foul calls) honestly, LSU deserved the W, their first ever title in team history. Congrats ladies!!!
Loser: Kim Mulkey
Ok due to the fact that she is the coach of the winning team in the women’s tourney, it may seem counterintuitive to argue she is a loser, and maybe you’re right. Kim Mulkey has won at everything she has done in life (except her marriage…heyoooo!)- She won the tournament as a player at LA Tech in college, she went on to win gold for Team USA at the Olympics, before LSU she coached Baylor to 2 Championship titles, and then she came to Baton Rouge and in 2 short years she took her team to the ship. And, one must admit, her outfits themselves? WINNERS. Pretty impressive right? WRONG. Ok it is impressive, but despite this lady’s kooky style and uncanny ability to get the gold, we CANNOT stan, which is why she goes in the loser category. Nothing says loser to me more than being against LGBT+ rights (especially as a women’s basketball coach because like…well…you know). A prime example of this: At Baylor, Mulkey coached Britney Griner, who was essentially told by the team staff that she couldn’t be openly out of the closet, AND they made her play in long sleeves to cover her tattoos (which just seems like a dick move, idk). Mulkey has never spoken out in support of BG, erven throughout her harrowing detainment in Russia. Kim girl wyd! It’s actually like, not hard to not be a shitty person! Also she was on the court a BUNCH during the title game.
Winner: Underdogs
I mean, obviously we didn’t see a single top seed advance past the sweet sixteen, so already the Underdogs are up, but we saw SO MANY great, underrated teams come into this tournament and prove the doubters wrong. Florida Atlantic, a 9 seed from a random conference, made it to the final four (those owls…they HOOTED I’ll say it) and kept SDSU at bay for MOST OF THE GAME (only to be defeated with a buzzer beater that was…insane). Three of the Final Four teams were on their first trip to that stage in the tournament. If one thing is clear from these last few weeks, and from this blog post, it’s that maybe we should stop underrating the little conferences! The Furman Paladins, the FDU Knights, even SDSU was considered a bit of a cinderella for their run to the final- just because the conference is small, does NOT mean their impact will be! Plus everyone loves an underdog story (even if so many of them were from NJ this year?? Something to unpack there)
Loser: 5 Seeds
Something they told us repeatedly during the final: a five seed has never won the NCAA tournament (but a 1,2,3,4,6,7, and 8 seed has) I don’t have more to add to that, it’s just a really wild statistic to me.
Winner: Charles Barkley
Again, not much to elaborate on here, I just had a wonderful time watching Chuck and the boys, I hope they had fun, I loved his big hat:
Loser: The Big 10
See above for my policy on small conferences, and now, Big 10, it’s time for us to have a little conversation. EVERY SINGLE YEAR I tell myself I will not fall into their trap. I look at these very tall boys (Zach Edey), I look at their regular season dominance, and I tell myself : to not be fooled by this wolf in sheep’s clothing. Because even though they look real nice, they let me down EVERY DAMN TIME. Purdue lost in the first round (which, we were not surprised by of course, we told y’all Purdue was ass) but like! They really screwed everyone over! I am also looking at you IOWA and also you PENN STATE and even you INDIANA. Go GET YOUR ACTS TOGETHER and come back when you’re ready to WIN. Michigan State gets an exception here but that’s Tom Izzo power, not Big Ten Supremacy. Would like to add that once again, after the fact all the pundits were like OBVIOUSLY the Big 10 was overrated and the FATIGUE caught up with them we knew this all along. CHECK THE TAPE Y’ALL WE CALLED IT THEY DID NOT.
WHAT’S UP NEXT
It is absolutely wild to me that we go from 1 weekend where there is literally basketball 24/7 and a mere 2 weeks later, my soul is empty and I’m filled with nostalgia for the buckets of the past. So now what??? Well CBS would have you believe that the next big thing is ThE mAsTeRs but pssssh no ( the ONLY THING that interests me about the masters is the pimento cheese sandiwch. That’s it that’s the whole list). We’ll be coming to you with more soccer wrap ups (DRAMA!) including Premier League, NWSL and more (potential match reports incoming!), occasional F1 updates and, of course, NBA Finals coverage (don’t worry the post season is like 3 months long so if you’ve followed nothing until now you have time to get up to speed, also some of us didn’t know the play in tournament was about to start…really weird the NBA isn’t keeping me on staff? I’m so knowledgeable?)
See ya on the bball court! Or, idk, at the bar?
