We got entirely too close to having Dick Vitale call an NCAA Tournament, a fate that was a meeting or two away from becoming a reality. And this was even before the broadcast bidding rights began. When the talks started up at CBS prior to the 2009-10 college basketball season about what it needed to do to restructure its deal with the NCAA, one idea got floated out there that was unprecedented ... Read More

As we all scurry to write our words and speak our reactions, let's just get to the bare bones of what's transpired today: The Tournament and the regular season are still respectable, relevant (that's a relative term to some, I know) and salvaged. The NCAA announced expansion to 68 teams for the primary postseason men's Division I basketball tournament. That change, which will start next year, came, largely, because CBS needed ... Read More

Somewhat of a shocker here, as quite a few people expected ESPN to push rather hard for the broadcast rights in this critical year. This decision by the Juggernaut has little to do with expansion, it would seem, though. Somewhat shockingly, the sports world's richest company passed on the opportunity to broadcast one of the most unifying events in American sports — a sport it already dedicates more than 2,200 hours of ... Read More

And they say underdogs don't draw a crowd. Yes, I know Duke brought the majority of this number, but I think it would be unfair to not give Butler a fraction of the credit. We can bash on all those "Hoosiers" references, but when those storylines are hammered home across the board, they bring in the casual viewer. The last time CBS had a better rating than the 16/25 it got last ... Read More

A superstar showing by the three S's sent Duke to the finals. Duke won by the second-largest margin in a national semifinal since the field expanded; Kansas' 33-point throttling of Marquette in 2003 is the only one that tops it. Additionally, West Virginia's worst loss this season before last night's game was a 15-point dismantling at the hands of Purdue on New Year's Day. And the reason Duke won this game is ... Read More

Not going to go against what I wrote earlier this week, when I said Tom Izzo is one of the 10 best coaches of all-time. And if you're going to be a sycophant and start chiding Izzo for going one for six in Final Four appearances, then I think you need to start sitting at the kiddies' table with the same people who gave Bill Self a hard time before ... Read More

Butler will be playing for college basketball's national championship. It's such a glorious day. Yet again, this team gets it done, even when so, so many things didn't go it sway. Sure Matt Howard found early foul trouble (played only 15 minutes), per usual, as he picked up his second (a bit of a bad call?) before the 14-minute mark hit. But Gordon Hayward was wet, scoring 10 early and swishing three ... Read More

Little secret: the national semifinals don't often produce a really good singular game, and almost never give us two classics. So I poured through my history book and my memory trying to think about and find out which five final Saturday nights of the season were the most memorable since the world was given the gift that is Brad Stevens. In chronological order: 1977: North Carolina 84, UNLV 83; Marquette 51, Charlotte ... Read More

That's the big headline coming out of Indianapolis on the day of all teams' arrival into the Circle City. This is another block taken out of the 65-team jenga tower, a tower that's slowly been played with for the past four months. USA Today has the brief story that's based on that one word — probable. Here are Delany's words to Steve Wieberg. "I said from Day 1 that I would support the ... Read More

Well, isn't this fun. Tennessee and its officiating controversy couldn't last for more than two hours. Nope, here comes Duke. And it got not one but TWO controversial helpful calls from the officials. Oh, the horror! I cringe at the number of officials-and-Duke/conspiracy posts and columns that are coming down the pike in the next 24 hours. What we need to do is focus on just how incredibly Duke played in beating ... Read More

A great game with an ending that's going to be/already is more controversial than it should. How conveniently Tennessee will forget that Scotty Hopson could've possibly made this foul call a moot issue had he and his 59.5-percent foul shooting clip made two free throws with 11.2 seconds remaining. Before we continue, the video. As Raftery mentions, if the foul isn't called against J.P. Prince, how confident are we that Brian ... Read More

When he was at Memphis the critics of John Calipari's teams called out the way he would lose long before they ever did. The writing was always on the wall at the beginning of the season. Without a national championship to claim, Calipari is equally becoming known for his monster recruiting classes and how those classes can't be coached out of bad habits. He's also now known as Bob Huggins' whipping ... Read More

Did you enjoy Friday night? All three Cinderella teams officially found their pumpkin, we had one blowout and Tennessee-Ohio State was the only game of the four that was all that entertaining, really, and even that had some serious inconsistency with foul calls. The two storylines that can be taken away from everything last night are Turner pulling a LeBron and not shaking Tennessee's hands (zOMG!) and Mike Krzyzewski trying to ... Read More

You know what I really appreciate about how Maryland and Michigan State ended? NO TIMEOUTS. Reminded me of that Oklahoma State-St. Joseph’s game in 2004, except that one didn’t have a shot go in as the clock expired. A lot to examine in this final sequence. Plus, video of Raymar Morgan losing a Chiclet.

CHJ detailed the Golden Lions' brutal road schedule earlier this season. It didn't play a home game until mid-January. That kind of ambitious and pay-your-dues scheduling was karmic, as Arkansas-Pine Bluff defeated Winthrop, 61-44. Full confession: I watched not three minutes of last night's play-in (never opening round! Never!) game. Confession No. 2: My car died on the highway as I was driving home. It's time to move on from the 1995 ... Read More

CHJ's final regional preview comes to you in the dinner hour, and it's a full meal of games that the East is offering up. In fact, a buffet's more like it, and you won't want to treat this group of tilts like an à la cart menu (too heavy on the food metaphors? Stopping now). In the past decade no region has had more unpredictability, in terms of which seed ... Read More

Now we're going to talk about Duke and all that's been handed to it and how easy it's going to be for it to saunter to the Final Four. Wait. We're not doing any of that. See, Duke can't "win." Either it reaches the Final Four and everyone rolls their eyes, or it loses before then and Duke gets pummeled for not being able to roll through what's conceived to ... Read More

Heard it called The Man Region yesterday, and that's a great call. I went on the radio last night to talk about these 16 teams, and as I was feebly trying to come off as something barely resembling an analyst, I realized this region is great for us, the viewers. Yeah, it really sucks that Kansas got the toughest region possible, but what a television experience this quadrant is going ... Read More