Dave Preston is an AP Top 25 voter. See his latest ballot here.
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is underway with the first half of the First Four in the books. And while I often have plenty of fun at the expense of the NCAA, I’m more than happy to admit when it does things right. All four winners this year have fairly short trips from Dayton to their First Round sites. Instead of a late-night flight to Seattle, it’s short hops to Raleigh, Milwaukee and Lexington.
Play resumes this evening as American meets Mount St. Mary’s in a duel of 22-12 teams. While the Eagles won their conference tournament at Bender Arena after tying for the Patriot League regular season title, the Mountaineers won three games in three nights at Atlantic City as the No. 6 seed.
“The idea of playing a 50-50 neutral site game in the tournament is not a bad deal,” Mount St. Mary’s coach Donny Lind said. “American has a strong inside-outside presence with Matt Rogers, who’s going to be a load for us to deal with for sure.”
It’s been said that styles make fights, and this showdown provides an intriguing matchup.
“They’re gonna shoot some 3s. Some of them I see, I’m like ‘Man, that’s a tough shot,’ and he makes them. We’re going to have to take stock of their 3-point shooting. Good thing is we’ve done a good pretty good job from a 3-point defensive perspective,” American coach Duane Simpkins said.
“They do a really good job crashing the glass, they’ll send three, four, five guys sometimes. And we’ve got to be sharp. … The things that they do well are things that, so far, we’ve done real well. And now we’ve got to make sure we do it on the big stage.”
AU hits the stage at 6:40 p.m.
The East Region
Duke awaits the winner of American and Mount St. Mary’s in Raleigh on Friday afternoon, and the Blue Devils enter the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 team in both major polls after winning the ACC Tournament — even though the conference isn’t what it used to be.
Duke is also the only automatic qualifier in the top half of the region’s bracket, one that features a potential Pac-12 reunion in the second round (Oregon-Arizona), plus an SEC showdown between opposites (although Alabama fans are still shocked they lost on the football field to Vanderbilt last fall). It’s Duke’s field to win.
Bold: BYU had won nine straight before coming up short in the Big 12 semifinals to eventual champion Houston. The Cougars led the conference in scoring and shooting while ranking third from 3-point range. They also rank second in rebounding and start the tournament in nearby Denver. They won’t get to San Antonio and the Final Four, but they have a great chance playing for the right to do so.
Fold: Despite being a perennial top-20 team, Wisconsin hasn’t reached the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2017. This season, the Badgers started strong, only to lose three straight in December. They played their way into a double-bye — only to fall at home to Penn State in their season finale. The Badgers beat Big Ten regular season champ Michigan State, only to shoot 22% (and 7 of 39 from 3) the next day in the Big Ten Championship Game. Initially, one thinks they’ll have issues to BYU or VCU in the second round.
Gold: The bracket is set up for the Blue Devils to advance, and Duke has the best player in the country with Cooper Flagg. Even after leaving nearby Raleigh, Newark is hardly a foreign land as the NJ side of the Hudson has been a de facto Blue Devils colony since 1986.
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