Dave Preston is an AP Top 25 voter. Check out his ballots here.
Monday can be tough to handle for many, especially the one following Selection Sunday as more than a few schools clean up their shattered dreams of making the NCAA Tournament. One-bid league regular season champs Princeton and Norfolk State fell in their conference tournaments, while bubble schools like St. John’s and Indiana State didn’t hear their names during the Selection Show on CBS.
A few of those snubbed have decided to snub the NIT for good measure. But for 68 schools, the dream of cutting down the nets is still alive.
One of those schools is Howard (18-16, 9-5 MEAC), who is dancing for the second straight year (first repeat visit in program history). Even though the Bison knew they had an automatic berth assured after winning the MEAC Tournament, it was still magical for head coach Kenneth Blakeney to see his team’s name on the TV screen.
“It made me emotional. I got a little teary-eyed because there’s been a lot of work that’s been put into trying to get this program to where we’ve gotten it,” Blakeney said. “It’s certainly not done with one person. It takes a little bit of a village to push something that for so many years has been dormant and make it relevant in this space of college basketball.”
The key to the program’s return despite losing starters Elijah Hawkins and Steve Settle was doing the little things.
“Running the court in six seconds, getting deflections, getting steals, rebounding, cutting, making sure we’re talking and pointing on defense,” guard Bryce Harris said. “When you’re at this level in Division I basketball the talent level starts to even out, almost. So you have to do the little things right.”
The Bison face a similar foe in Tuesday’s First Four. While the Bison won the MEAC Tournament as the No. 4 seed, Wagner (16-15, 7-9 NEC) won the Northeast Conference as the No. 7 seed, beating the top three seeds along the way as they had to win all three games on their opponent’s home floors. Wagner led the NEC in scoring defense while holding foes to 29.5% from three-point range (eighth best in Division I). Melvin Council Jr. led the Seahawks in scoring and rebounding (15 points and six rebounds per game), but it was Tahron Allen who averaged 18 points with seven rebounds in the NEC Tournament.
“We’re just going to have to lock in to the scouting report,” Howard senior guard Jordan Hairston said. “As soon as we leave this building right here, that’s when preparation starts. Whether it’s on the plane, whether it’s in the hotel, we’re just going to have to lock in on what we have to do to get the job done.”
Howard and Wagner tip off the 2024 tournament Tuesday at 6:40 p.m., with the winner getting another tight turnaround (2:45 p.m. tipoff Thursday) and a taller task (No. 1 seed North Carolina).
The remainder of the West Region is the one I’m most familiar with. In addition to Howard and North Carolina, I’ve seen four other schools in person (Michigan State, College of Charleston, Clemson and Dayton). You’ve got a pair of “MSUs” in the No. 8 vs. No. 9 game (Michigan State and Mississippi State), plus a guy who isn’t coaching for his job because Long Beach State elected to move on from Dan Monson before he led the “Beach” (yes, they haven’t been called the 49ers since 2019 and it seriously looks like a typo) to three wins in three days at the Big West Tournament.
So without further ado, we begin our “Bold” (which team in the bracket wins a game or two beyond their seeding), “Fold” (which school will underperform its seeding), and “Gold” (who goes to Glendale, Arizona, and the Final Four) picks.
Bold:
Dayton won 24 games during the regular season and was ranked in the Top 25 regularly before stumbling in the Atlantic 10 Tournament quarterfinals (a day where the top four seeds went down in defeat). The Flyers (24-7) boast a dynamic big man in A-10 Co-Player of the Year DaRon Holmes II (20 points with eight rebounds per game) who grew up in Arizona and would relish taking on the Wildcats in the second round.
Fold:
Alabama may rank second in the nation in scoring but the Crimson Tide enter the Big Dance having lost four of six while allowing an average of 97 points per game. Not exactly sustainable. They meet a College of Charleston team in the first round that makes the eighth most three-pointers per game in Division I, followed by a potential matchup with Saint Mary’s in Spokane, Washington, where the Gaels have been known to win lately (at Gonzaga’s expense).
Gold:
It’s easy to dismiss Saint Mary’s as a team that flies under the radar as the Gaels have been the Pepsi to Gonzaga’s Coca-Cola this century (and I guess that makes San Francisco the RC Cola and Santa Clara the Fanta). But this year, they won the West Coast Conference’s regular season and tournament titles behind a defense that allows the second fewest points per game in Division I while leading the country in rebounding margin. There’s often one region where a non-top four seed advances (last year there were three), and this year’s upstart comes out of the West.
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