When March comes around, people start getting in the baseball mood as spring training is in full swing and opening day is right around the corner; but before baseball gets going there is one thing that captivates all viewers and that is the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
The NCAA tournament is something that even non-sport fans take part in, as everyone wants to fill out a bracket and compete against friends and family for prizes or just even bragging rights until the tournament comes around again next year. This year’s tournament should be one of the better ones in recent memory as no one is really sure what the top team is.
It has been a crazy season in college basketball this year as the top ranked team lost for an unprecedented six weeks in a row from the 10th-16th weeks of the season. With that there has also been a high number of teams reaching the pinnacle as being the number one ranked team in the nation, with five.
The latest team to reach the top has done so for the first time in the program’s history, Gonzaga University finds itself atop the rankings currently; it may be more of a negative right now than a positive with how the other top teams have fared this season though. Gonzaga is the third team from outside of the big six conferences to sit atop the rankings in the last 10 years, as St. Joseph’s College did it in 2003-2004 and Memphis University did it in 2007-2008.
This week the conference tournaments will be held as teams will play for one of the 68 spots in the big dance, with winners of the conference tournaments earning automatic bids. The conference tournaments are always filled with excitement as for many teams this is the only way they can make it to the tournament as their regular season resumes are not worthy of an at-large bid.
The path to the championship is as open as it has ever been in college basketball as there is no consensus as to who the best teams are; if you ask a group of people their answers will undoubtedly be different and most times will even struggle to give only one team. Some of those teams include the other teams who have been ranked number one this year in Indiana, Duke, Louisville and Michigan.
With so much parity in the NCAA this season it is hard to pick where teams will be seeded, let alone which ones are legitimate contenders to win the championship The only definite right now is that it will be an action packed three weekends that will once again captivate an audience not usually reserved for watching sports.