Preview of the 2024 NCAA Tournament

There is a huge difference between excellent college players and those who will excel at the next level. These days, college hoops is dominated by big men who have no place in today’s NBA. Iowa’s Luka Garza, the national player of the year, is toiling in the G league. Ditto Oscar Tshibwe. Drew Timme? A current resident of Oshkosh, home of the Wisconsin Herd. This season it’s Zach Edey and Hunter Dickinson and Armando Bacot. Rinse and repeat. Look, they’re all great. But the age of the back-to-the-basket big man at the pro level is over and it’s not coming back.

So who are the can't miss NBA prospects? The top two are French (what are they putting in the water over there?). One plays in Australia (Alexandre Sarr, little brother of former Kentucky big Olivier Sarr who now plays for the Thunder) and the other in France (Zaccarie Ricacher). We won’t be seeing those guys this month. So who are the top prospects in the tourney?

Even the most die-hard Kentucky homer has trouble believing that our own Reed Sheppard is considered a lock top-3 pick. Some draft boards have him going #1, which is mind-boggling. Do yourself a favor and click this link just to hear Reed’s proud Momma describe his story with a mountain accent as thick as blackstrap molasses.

Reed’s game is solid but nuanced. His backcourt partner, Rob Dillingham, is all flash. Shades of Allen Iverson. He’s a top-6 pick.

I look forward to checking out Colorado’s Cody Williams, the brother of Thunder star Jalen Williams. Cody is a Swiss Army knife of a player who has skill on both sides of the ball. Questions about his ability to create his own shot against world-class defenders have taken him out of the conversation for the top draft spot.

Duke’s Kyle Filipowski is a sophomore so we’re familiar with his game. Solidly in the lottery. The Blue Devil’s star freshman is Jared McCain, who gets compared most often to Knicks (and Kentucky) guard Immanuel Quickley.

He’s a senior, but no one outside of Fargo, ND had heard of Dalton Knecht before this season. Unless Tennessee exits the tourney early, we’ll revisit the Knecht odyssey from Northeastern Junior College to Northern Colorado to SEC Player of the Year to lottery pick. Gets compared to Szczerbiak but he’s way more athletic than Wally ever was. 

The times I watched UConn's freshman Stephon Castle this season, he was fine. I seem to have caught the troughs in his up-and-down season. He also had plenty of games he lit it up. This month, he’s not even scoring in double digits. He’ll have to turn it on in the Dance to have a shot at the lottery.

The NCAA changed the block-charge rule this season. Back in the day, the defender had to have their feet set to draw a charge. This century, the defender could be moving leading to the whole exercise being an object lesson in subjectivity. In practice, the pendulum swung to the defense. Now charges get called maybe 10% of the time so defenders have stopped sliding under driving players in mid-air. A definite improvement. Next, can we please do something about the incessant and interminable trips to the monitor down the stretch of close games?

Mark Few has taken Gonzaga to a level no one could ever have imagined. But the journey started with Dan Monson. After leading the Zags to the Elite 8 in 1999 (losing to eventual national champion UConn), Monson jumped ship for Minnesota, a Big 10 team then perceived as a higher profile job. Didn't work out and Monson ended up at Long Beach State, where his teams have been consistently mediocre. The school announced that they would part ways with Monson just before the Big West tournament. Which his team promptly went out and won, securing an automatic bid to the Big Dance. Awkward! 15-seed Long Beach plays #2 Arizona on Thursday.

The Long Beach State mascot? The Beach. I am not making this up.

Australians: Tyrese Proctor (Duke,) Achor Achor (Samford), Johnny Furphy (Kansas) and Reyne Smith (Charleston).

Bulldogs, the mascot of Gonzaga, Samford, Yale, Drake and Mississippi State.

A Stetson is a hat, right? I look forward to figuring out the what and where of Grambling.

There were two play-in games on Tuesday. One involved Virginia and the abominable style of play favored by Coach Tony Bennett. In their loss to Colorado State, the Cavs scored 14 points in the first half. One, four. Literally everyone unfortunate enough to tune into that was like...

Four teams from Alabama made the tournament. Three of them (Alabama, UAB and Auburn) will complete in Spokane, a sleepy little village in the Palouse region of eastern Washington surrounded by miles and miles and miles of lentil fields. Good luck finding a direct flight. High scoring Samford (which is in Birmingham) plays #4 seed Kansas in Salt Lake City. This game has all the markings of an upset. Kansas was run out of the gym by Cincinnati over the weekend. McCullar and Dickinson were out with injuries, but the Jayhawks were (shockingly) reeling down the stretch even with both of their best players in the lineup. The #4 seed is a fairly common first round upset, including 4-seed Kansas in 2005 and 2006. (Sorry Suzanne!)

My lab and the one led by Morgan James went to our first Rutgers basketball game together since the pandemic. Rutgers defeated Nebraska in overtime. Rutgers did not make the tournament; Nebraska did. The Huskers hold the dubious distinction of the only Power 5 conference team to never win a game in the tournament.

Pitino on Pitino crime. Richard Pitino Jr coaches New Mexico. The Lobos (nice mascot) beat San Diego State to win the Mountain West Conference tournament, thus securing an automatic bid to the Big Dance (they were very much on the bubble otherwise). St John’s, coached by Rick Pitino the elder, saw their bubble burst on Sunday. Many jumped to the conclusion that one Pitino took the spot of the other. Not likely, considering the Red Storm were not among the first four out. The first season at St John’s was a weird one for Pitino Sr. His team went 20-13 and ended up the highest ranked team (#25) to be left out of the tournament. Rick used some, uh, interesting motivational tactics. During the season, he told the press “We kind of lost this season with the way we recruited. We recruited the antithesis of the way I coach. It’s a good group, they try hard, but they’re just not very tough.” He followed that up with: "I'm not gonna lie to you: This is the most unenjoyable experience of my lifetime." Weirdly, his team responded by winning six straight and giving UConn a run for their money in the Big East tourney final. Rick called the metrics the NCAA selection committee uses (i.e. the NET) “fraudulent”. He obviously has turned into a cranky old man, but he remains one of the premier tacticians in the sport. St John’s declined an invitation to the NIT (ditto Ole Miss, Oklahoma, Pitt and Memphis - the once-proud NIT is rapidly becoming obsolete).

Kentucky opens the tournament against the Oakland Golden Grizzlies. Golden because they are from California, the golden state. This just in, Oakland University is located in Rochester, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The golden comes from their colors, black and gold. They changed their mascot from the Pioneers to “the Grizz” in 1997 when they made the transition from DII to DI. They are coached by Greg Kampe and have been for 40 seasons (!). Kampe’s 617 wins put him at #11 on the all-time list. This is their fourth appearance in the Big Dance.

Indiana State, alma mater of Larry Bird, just missed the Madness. So you will not have the opportunity to delight in the brilliance of one Robbie Avila. He looks like about a million guys playing in church rec leagues every weekend, goggles very much included. But my man has game, which has led to a multitude of nicknames including Cream Abdul Jabbar, Larry Nerd, Rob Wave and Steph Blurry. The publicity has done wonders for Avila’s bank account, including a lucrative NIL deal from a certain goggle manufacturer. In this player empowerment era, expect Avila to move to a Power 5 team sooner rather than later. Which is too bad in this case, because his athletically challenged game is not suited for the big leagues. Being the biggest thing in Terre Haute since Larry Legend is a pretty good gig, especially if you can make six figures doing it.