Subscribe
Follow Us
After an eventful 96 hours of NCAA Tournament action — which for me included six games at Rocket Arena in Cleveland, Ohio — it's time that we crown some winners and losers of the opening weekend of March Madness. Friends, let's not waste any more time. We've got a lot to cover!
Loser – 1st Round Madness
For the second consecutive year while writing this column, I'll open with the same unfortunate joke that the 1st Round of the NCAA Tournament felt more like March Madness than March Madness. Why did nearly all Cinderella candidates decide to RSVP ‘no' for the Big Dance? Why were no buzzers beaten? Why hasn't there been one single window of games that has forced me to make difficult decisions with the TV remote? I was having a full-blown existential crisis by Friday night, wondering if CBS could sign Gus Johnson to a 10-day contract to inject some life into this tournament with his very real madness juju.
And listen, if you think I'm being overdramatic, just check out this… the margin of victory in the 1st Round of the last ten NCAA Tournaments, sorted by the highest margin of victory to the lowest margin of victory.
2025 – 16.0 points
2024 – 16.0 points
2019 – 14.6 points
2022 – 14.5 points
2021 – 13.5 points
2016 – 13.5 points
2017 – 13.0 points
2018 – 11.9 points
2023 – 11.7 points
2015 – 10.6 points
See, I'm not crazy…
Winner – 2nd Round Madness
… But thanks to the 2nd Round of the 2025 NCAA Tournament, I am officially mad, and boy, do I love it. In the last 48 hours, we've been treated to nine single-digit games, four seed upsets, and a handful of Ah yes, this is March games, like St. John's/Arkansas, Wisconsin/BYU, Houston/Gonzaga, Florida/UConn, Maryland/Colorado State, Michigan State/New Mexico, Arizona/Oregon, and even Texas A&M/Michigan, which ended up being a 12 point Wolverines win, but that game was awesome from start to finish.
I'm happy to report that my existential crisis is over.
Loser – Mid-Majors
Check out this breakdown of the teams remaining as we approach the Sweet Sixteen:
SEC – 7
Big Ten – 4
Big 12 – 4
ACC – 1
This is the first tournament since 2019 that hasn't featured a single non-Power Five/non-Gonzaga team in the Sweet Sixteen, and last year it was San Diego State, who was coming off of a National Championship Game appearance, that represented the middle class.
Admittedly, I haven't done a deep enough dive on just how much NIL and the Transfer Portal are damaging mid-major and low-major programs, but it really feels like we're heading in a direction where the teams — and more accurately, the conferences — that have the most money to spend on their players are the ones who are going to be populating the Sweet Sixteen from here on out.
Now you could say, ‘Well Sonny, hasn't that always been the case, that the bigger schools/more established programs make deeper runs in the NCAA Tournament?' The answer to that prompt is yes, but it does seem like it's only going to get more difficult for traditional Cinderella teams to have extended stays in the Big Dance when these schools will just be pillaged one year after another, taking away what has historically been one of their greatest assets come tournament time… continuity.
Winner – John Calipari
In reality, there may not be a bigger winner from the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament than John Calipari, whose Arkansas Razorbacks went from living dangerously on the bubble just one month ago to in the Sweet Sixteen, with wins over Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks, and Rick Pitino and the St. John's Red Storm just for good measure.
Seriously, how giddy do you think Coach Cal has been since he knocked Rick Pitino out of the tournament on Saturday? I mean, the schadenfreude must be absolutely through the roof right now. We're talking Kid on Christmas morning combined with Holy Hell, I just won the lottery levels of happiness, and now Cal is just two wins away from taking a fourth school to the Final Four.
Losers – The Big East and ACC
For the first time since 1975, the ACC failed to send more than one team to the 2nd Round of the NCAA Tournament, which isn't necessarily a huge surprise considering the conference only got four teams in the field, which was as many as the Mountain West Conference. Louisville lost a de facto home game in Round 1, North Carolina survived the First Four but couldn't continue their run against Ole Miss, and Clemson, my outside-the-box Final Four pick played one of the worst 1st halves you'll ever see in the NCAA Tournament against McNeese.
Meanwhile, the Big East sent five teams in the Dance, three made it out of the 1st Round, but not a single one is left standing heading into the Sweet Sixteen, including the two-time defending champion UConn Huskies, or the Big East regular season and tournament champion St. John's Red Storm.
In total, that's just one of a combined nine teams from the Big East and ACC that made it to the Sweet Sixteen, and that team is the Duke Blue Devils, whose path to the second weekend required them to score wins over Mount St. Mary's and Baylor, which is not exactly a murderer's row. That's not to take anything away from Duke, who could easily make the case for being the best team in the country, it's just a statement of fact that in this tournament, they haven't been required to really flex their muscles just yet.
A potential merger between the two conferences may be the best chance that schools on the Atlantic Coast and in the Northeast have a chance to continue to compete with the SEC, Big Ten, and even the Big 12.
Winner – UConn Huskies
That's right, even though my Huskies couldn't quite hold on against the top-seeded Florida Gators on Sunday afternoon, with a Round 1 win over the Oklahoma Sooners on Friday night, UConn got their 13th straight NCAA Tournament victory, which tied the 1991-93 Duke Blue Devils' record for the longest streak in NCAA history since seeding began in 1979. To me, that feels like a rather large victory, even if UConn's three-peat bid went out the window much earlier than anyone in Storrs believed it was going to back at the beginning of November.
In the end, this team just had too many holes that they didn't have each of the last two seasons. Not enough size. Not enough shooting. No single player who could reliably create his own shot. They were getting by on guile and grit, and even those characteristics didn't show up consistently enough. For 38 minutes on Sunday afternoon, it looked like they had enough to spring an upset and get back to the Sweet Sixteen, and at that point, who the hell knows what can happen? But for now, the basketball capital of the world will need to wait another year to see if the men's team can hang a seventh championship banner.
Winner – Walter Clayton Jr.
There were no shortage of star players in the opening two rounds of the tournament, and then there was one absolute killer, and his name is Walter Clayton Jr. Just when it felt like the UConn Huskies were gonna be able to muck things up and turn their 2nd Round game against Florida into a Big East grinder long enough to upset the title favorite Gators, Clayton went to another level and the Huskies just didn't have an answer.
Johni Broome may have been the SEC Player of the Year, and Cooper Flagg may be the best overall player in the 2025 NCAA Tournament. But there might not be a guy more capable of putting a team on his back for six straight rounds than Walter Clayton Jr.
Winner – Norfolk State Spartans
As the old saying goes, ‘Good teams win, great teams cover,' and in this instance, just days after head coach Robert Jones said he believed the Spartans were being disrespected by the bookmakers who had the Florida Gators favored by 28.5 points, Norfolk State went out there and played great in their opening round game of the NCAA Tournament, if you catch my drift.
Winner – Amir Khan
Good lord did this kid's popularity take off like a goddamn rocket ship, and I'll be honest, I still don't totally understand why. Despite my purposeful ignorance, my guess is the name “Amir Khan” has far more SEO juice right now than McNeese head coach Will Wade, or any of Wade's top three scorers, Javohn Garcia, Christian Shumate, or Sincere Parker. It turns out, much to my disappointment, he may even have more appeal in the NCAA transfer portal.
Loser – Society
Guys, we need to do better than letting the manager of a team that earned an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament make it out of March more famous than any of the players on the team. Like, what are we doing here? Has March Madness officially jumped the shark?
I'm serious, guys. Do we need to start a GoFundMe to get Gus back?
