One last 2012 NCAA tournament bracket projection

By Dave OmmenMar 11, 2012, 5:06 PM EDT

Regardless of how the final selections come together tonight, the Selection Committee has completed a monumental task. There has rarely been a field this diverse and a bubble this large. We could see a variety of outcomes, and none of them will necessarily be wrong or right. That’s the truth about this year’s bubble.

What we know – or anticipate – is that Kentucky will be the No. 1 overall seed. Syracuse will be second. After that, there remains some questions. We have Kentucky, Syracuse, North Carolina and Michigan State on the top line. That could switch pending the outcome of the Michigan State/Ohio State game in the actual selection room.

Take your pick out of the at-large teams. There were roughly 14 teams about 6 spots. You could make cases for or against any number of them.

Enjoy the Selection Show. March Madness is here.

Teams in CAPS represent the projected AUTOMATIC bid. Exceptions are made for teams that use an abbreviation (UTEP, BYU, etc). Records are for games against Division I teams only.

FIRST FOUR PAIRINGS – Dayton (First Round)

Drexel vs. N.C. State | East Region
South Florida vs. Cal | East Region
MS VALLEY STATE vs. WESTERN KENTUCKY | South Region
VERMONT vs. NORFOLK STATE | Midwest

BRACKET PROJECTION …

EAST – Boston		MIDWEST – St. Louis
Pittsburgh		Louisville
1) Syracuse		1) Kentucky
16) UNC-ASHEVILLE		16) MS VALLEY ST / W. KENTUCKY
8) San Diego State		8) Gonzaga
9) Saint Louis		9) Connecticut

Portland		Albuquerque
5) VANDERBILT		5) Cincinnati
12) Drexel / N.C. State		12) Virginia
4) Indiana		4) Wisconsin
13) OHIO		13) SOUTH DAKOTA ST

Columbus		Nashville
6) MURRAY STATE		6) CREIGHTON
11) South Florida / Cal		11) Colorado State
3) Michigan		3) LOUISVILLE
14) BELMONT		14) DAVIDSON

Greensboro		Omaha
7) Kansas State		7) ST. MARY’S
10) Xavier		10) SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI
2) Duke		2) MISSOURI
15) LEHIGH		15) DETROIT

SOUTH – Atlanta		WEST – Phoenix
Greensboro		Columbus
1) North Carolina		1) Michigan State
16) VERMONT / NORFOLK ST		16) LAMAR
8) Iowa State		8) Notre Dame
9) Purdue		9) Alabama

Portland		Nashville
5) Florida		5) Wichita State
12) LONG BEACH ST		12) Texas
4) Georgetown		4) Florida State
13) ST. BONAVENTURE		13) COLORADO

Albuquerque		Louisville
6) UNLV		6) NEW MEXICO
11) Seton Hall		11) VCU
3) Baylor		3) Marquette
14) MONTANA		14) NEW MEXICO ST

Pittsburgh		Omaha
7) Temple		7) MEMPHIS
10) West Virginia		10) HARVARD
2) Ohio State		2) Kansas
15) LONG ISLAND		15) LOYOLA-MD

NOTES on the BRACKET: Kentucky is the No. 1 overall seed followed by Syracuse, North Carolina, and Michigan State. Next in line are Kansas, Missouri, Ohio State, Duke

Last Five teams in (at large): Seton Hall, South Florida, Drexel, N.C. State, Cal

First Five teams out (at large): Mississippi State, BYU, Marshall, Northwestern, Miami-Fla

Also considered: Tennessee, Oral Roberts, Middle Tennessee State, Mississippi

Adjustments: Several one-line adjustments were needed to follow correct bracketing principles.

Here is the team breakdown by Conference …

Big East (10): Syracuse, Georgetown, Louisville, Connecticut, Marquette, West Virginia, Notre Dame, Cincinnati, Seton Hall, South Florida

Big Ten (6): Ohio State, Michigan State, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Purdue

Big 12 (6): Baylor, Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Texas

SEC (4): Kentucky, Florida, Vanderbilt, Alabama

ACC (5): North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, Florida State, NC State

Mountain West (4): UNLV, San Diego State, New Mexico, Colorado State

Atlantic 10 (3): Xavier, St. Louis, Temple, St. Bonaventure

West Coast (3): Gonzaga, St. Mary’s

Conference USA (3): Memphis, Southern Mississippi

Missouri Valley (2): Creighton, Wichita State

Pac 12 (1): California, Colorado

Conference leaders/champions … WESTERN KENTUCKY (Sun Belt), DETROIT (Horizon), OHIO (MAC), VCU (CAA), NEW MEXICO STATE(WAC), MURRAY STATE (OVC), LOYOLA-MD (MAAC), MONTANA (Big Sky), DAVIDSON (Southern), SOUTH DAKOTA STATE (Summit), LONG BEACH STATE (Big West), LONG ISLAND (NEC), BELMONT (Atlantic Sun), HARVARD (Ivy), NC-ASHEVILLE (Big South), NORFOLK STATE (MEAC), LEHIGH (Patriot), VERMONT (America East), LAMAR (Southland), MS VALLEY STATE (SWAC)

Dan Hurley’s rebuild complete as UConn returns to Final Four

Associated PressMar 29, 2023, 1:26 PM EDT

Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

STORRS, Conn. – Before every home game, UConn’s hype man gets on his microphone and greets the crowd with, “Welcome to the basketball capital of the Wooooorrrrld!”

With four men’s NCAA championship banners hanging from the ceiling at Gampel Pavilion along with 11 women’s banners, it’s not an entirely empty brag.

The Huskies (29-8) are the biggest name left playing basketball this season, making the Final Four as a No. 4 seed, joining Miami (29-7) and San Diego State (31-6), both No. 5 seeds, and ninth-seeded Florida Atlantic (35-3).

But while Connecticut can boast the most titles of any school in college basketball over the last quarter-century, this week’s trip to the Final Four is the men’s first since their last championship in 2014.

In between, UConn went through a down period that included three straight losing seasons between 2017 and 2019 while languishing in the American Athletic Conference. It fired coach Kevin Ollie, lost a subsequent legal battle over his salary and endured NCAA sanctions.

When Dan Hurley took the job in 2018, his charge was to restore luster to the brand.

“The timeline, with the way that we did it, building a culture and doing it without cheating, without lying and doing it with integrity and building it the right way, I mean, we’re exactly on time,” Hurley said Tuesday.

Hurley credits good recruiting, including the additions this year of freshmen Alex Karaban, a starting forward from nearby Southborough, Massachusetts, and Donovan Clingan, a 7-foot-2 center from Bristol. UConn followers growing up, both have played key roles.

And there were the transfer portal pickups, including starting point guard Tristen Newton and role players Joey Calcaterra, Nahiem Alleyne and Hassan Diarra.

“I would definitely say the history was a huge component of why I came here,” Karaban said. “Seeing the four banners up there and seeing what coach (Jim) Calhoun had built and for it to be close to home for me as well was a major factor. It was something I wanted to do in my college career. I wanted to win national championships and make it to the Final Four and I wanted to add myself to history, to what was a super-cemented, historical program.”

Calhoun, the Hall of Fame coach who built UConn from a regional powerhouse into a national one, winning titles in 1999, 2004 and 2011, said Hurley has done a good job capitalizing on that foundation, including filling the school’s practice facility with pictures of past championships and Huskies who went on to the NBA.

The school’s decision to leave the American and rejoin the Big East in 2020 also was a factor, he said.

“It helped, there’s no question,” Calhoun said. “It helped get recruits. The competition, the opportunity to go great places and play great places. Nothing against the American, but the Big East is one of the two or three best basketball conferences in the country. We have teams that traveled very far in the tournament.”

The Huskies haven’t lost a nonconference game all season, and the battles in the Big East, where they lost eight times, have helped harden them for the tournament, Calhoun said.

Hurley said he’s been relying heavily on advice from Calhoun and women’s coach Geno Auriemma on how to prepare his Huskies for everything that surrounds a trip to Houston and a date with Miami.

The Hurricanes are coached by Jim Larrañaga, who rose to fame when he coached 11th-seed George Mason to an upset win over Calhoun’s top-seeded UConn team in the 2006 regional finals. Larrañaga sees a lot of similarities in that matchup and this one – a shorter underdog against a much bigger blue blood with a longer history of success.

“We’re like 6-4, 6-6, 6-7 and UConn is huge,” he said. “So, it’s an interesting matchup in terms of contrasting bigs versus smalls.”

But while the Huskies are 8-1 in Final Four games, Hurley said the program’s tradition won’t help his team on Saturday.

“Having an incredible brand, it’s great, because that means you have a huge fan base and generally there’s going to be a pretty good commitment in terms of resources,” he said. “But if you don’t have the right people – if I don’t have the right coaching staff – being a blue blood doesn’t, I mean, there’s a lot of teams at home right now that are blue bloods.”

Women making case in tourney for own March Madness TV deal

Associated PressMar 29, 2023, 11:52 AM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Women’s basketball seems to have found a winner with its new Sweet 16 format in March Madness and the timing couldn’t be better with looming TV contract negotiations on the horizon.

There were record-setting attendance at the two sites – Greenville, South Carolina and Seattle – along with record numbers for TV ratings. It fueled the momentum heading into a star-packed Final Four lineup in Dallas.

NCAA selection committee chair Lisa Peterson expects the format success to help in upcoming contract negotiations. The current NCAA TV deal ends next summer.

“It has to,” she said. “I’m very much looking forward to seeing those conversations. It only can be good for the game. People are talking about it.”

TV ratings for games on Friday and Saturday averaged 1.2 million viewers, a 73% increase over last year. Saturday afternoon’s Ohio State and UConn matchup on ABC was the most watched women’s Sweet 16 game on record with an average of 2.4 million.

Ratings were also up for the games Sunday and Monday on ESPN – up 43% gain and averaged 2.2 million. Sunday night’s Iowa-Louisville contest which featured dynamic guard Caitlin Clark led the way at 2.5 million, making it the most watched Elite Eight game on record.

Tag Garson, Wasserman’s senior vice president of properties, said this year’s ratings will be one of many pieces that factor into what path the NCAA will take.

“When you’re looking at how ratings are performing as you’re preparing for a negotiation you don’t just look at one year,” he said. “You’re looking at the historical value while projecting out the future value.”

The NCAA is expected to decide by this fall whether to separate the women’s tournament or keep it as part of the championships TV package that includes at least 24 sports.

Peterson and her group will have a lot to review.

Arenas in Greenville and Seattle were mostly full which created an entertaining atmosphere. While attendance was expected to be high in Greenville with the undefeated Gamecocks there. the closest team to Seattle was Colorado – 1,300 miles away.

The distance didn’t stop fans from flocking to Seattle, with strong support from basketball fans around the city thanks in part to the success of the WNBA’s Storm over the last two decades. In the end, the Seattle region outdrew its South Carolina counterpart by a few thousand. Overall 82,275 fans took in the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games, including 43,556 in Seattle.

“It really was a great atmosphere to play in. You love to play in these kind of atmospheres with this kind of crowd and play in a great building like this,” said UConn coach Geno Auriemma whose team played in Seattle.

The NCAA also hopes the success leads to more cities bidding to host the regional games and eventually the Final Four.

“The number of cities that had bid (in the past), we didn’t have that many more options,” Peterson said. “With the success we’ve had hopefully it opens up new doors so we don’t keep going to the same cities.”

The local organizing committee in Seattle said that they expected the tournament to generate more than $8.3 million to the city.

“When we host events like this there’s no playbook to say it’s a guaranteed success,” Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell told The Associated Press. “You don’t know how the fans are going to come out, but what has been proven time and time again, particularly around women’s sports is that they come from all over the state even come from Canada. … The revenue is incredible for our tax base.”

Harrell threw Seattle’s hat in the ring for a future women’s Final Four, saying he would love it if his city got that opportunity.

One of the next steps the NCAA is planning for upcoming two regional sites is to turn them into “mini Final Fours.”

Many fans seemed to enjoy the new format going to more than just their team’s games. Dave Lichliter, who is from Pennsylvania, went to games both Friday and Saturday and enjoyed the expanded field.

“You get to see more teams,” said Lichliter, who was wearing an LSU championship football shirt from 2019. “Next year is Albany (New York) and Portland (Oregon), so we’ll see how that goes.”

So will the NCAA.

The two-city format will be in place at least another three years. The next bid cycle starts in July where regional hosting will be decided from 2027-31.

“We’re doing this for three years. It’s not a permanent deal,” Peterson said. “As always we’ll evaluate it. If we feel it doesn’t work, we’ll see what we need to do to change it. Whether it’s changing formats, or if that’s adding a day, Whatever that looks like, we’ll keep looking at it.”

There were a few logistical bumps with the two sites.

With eight schools at one venue required some adjustments by teams and arena staffs. Practice time on the court was cut from 90 minutes to 60 to allow all eight time on the court. It also required a little more coordination when it came to the locker rooms with teams having to double up.

But none of it seem to bother the players. Some said it felt like an AAU tournament from their younger days with so many teams in the same place.

“I think it’s fun. I think it’s cool,” said Clark, before he Hawkeyes guard added: “Obviously we’re not going to be coming to all the games, that’s just not really how it works, but I think I like the two regional sites.”

North Texas reaches NIT finals, shuts down Wisconsin 56-54

Associated PressMar 28, 2023, 11:53 PM EDT

Candice Ward-USA TODAY Sports

LAS VEGAS – Tylor Perry scored 14 of his 16 points in the first half, Rubin Jones scored all 12 of his after halftime and North Texas closed on a 10-0 run to beat Wisconsin 56-54 on Tuesday night in the semifinals of the NIT.

North Texas (30-7) advances to the program’s first NIT championship game on Thursday. Conference USA is now 16-1 this postseason.

North Texas, which trailed 41-29 at halftime, took its first lead of the game at 56-54 with 2:08 remaining on Moulaye Sissoko’s shot in the lane to cap a 10-0 run.

Wisconsin forward Tyler Wahl missed two free throws with 49.1 seconds left and North Texas worked the clock down before Perry had it poked away. Wahl had a shot blocked at the rim, but Wisconsin secured the loose ball and called a timeout with 5.8 left. Wisconsin got it inside to Wahl but Sissoko knocked it away and dove on the ball to end it.

The Mean Green, the nation’s leader in scoring defense at 55.7 points per game, held Wisconsin without a point for the final 9:07 of the game. The Badgers made just one of their last 16 shots – with 10 straight misses.

Kai Huntsberry scored four of his 12 points in the game-closing run for North Texas, which extended its program record for wins this season.

Chucky Hepburn scored all 15 of his points in the first half for Wisconsin (20-15), which was making its first appearance in the NIT semifinals.

Wisconsin dropped to 13-8 this season in games decided by five points or fewer.

NEW VENUE

The semifinals and final are being played at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas after Madison Square Garden in New York hosted every year but two since 1938, with the 2020 tournament canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 event held in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The 2024 semifinals and final will be played at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

LSU’s Kim Mulkey senses reunion in trip to Texas for Final Four

Associated PressMar 28, 2023, 9:35 PM EDT

Getty Images

DALLAS – Kim Mulkey is returning to Texas for another Final Four, keenly aware that her LSU Tigers will play a short road trip from the school she made synonymous with women’s basketball.

Mulkey is the third coach to take multiple schools to the Final Four, doing so in her second season back in her home state of Louisiana after leading Baylor to the national semifinals four times in 21 seasons.

The Bears won three national championships under Mulkey, combined for 23 regular-season and tournament titles in the Big 12 Conference and made the NCAA Tournament in all but one of her seasons.

“You never spend 21 years of your life building a dynasty, and that’s what we did at Baylor. I think we can all agree with that,” Mulkey said Tuesday. “I still have a home there. My grandchildren are there. So my heart will always be there.”

Mulkey and the Tigers (33-2) will face first-time Final Four qualifier Virginia Tech (31-4) in the opener Friday night in Dallas, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Mulkey’s former college home in Waco. Defending champion South Carolina (36-0) plays Iowa (30-6) in the late game.

Hall of Fame coach C. Vivian Stringer took three teams to the Final Four, and Gary Blair made it that far with two.

Blair’s second was Texas A&M in 2011, when he won an Elite Eight showdown with Mulkey at American Airlines Center. Five years later in Dallas, the Bears again fell one win short of the Final Four.

Mulkey is back in Dallas with a new team after a 54-42 Elite Eight victory over Miami.

“There will be Baylor people sitting in my section that are heartbroken that I left,” Mulkey said. “I get it. Someday when I’m retired, maybe I’ll write another book and have more details, but I love Baylor University, the fans there, the Lady Bear fans there. But it was time. Timing is everything in life.”

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley has fonder memories of the home of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. The Gamecocks won their first national title there five years ago, beating Mississippi State after the Bulldogs ended Connecticut’s 111-game winning streak in the semifinals.

“Dallas, it will be etched in my memory forever,” said Staley, whose team – the No. 1 overall seed – earned a return trip with an 86-75 victory over Maryland. “I remember vividly the police escorts. I remember our fans. I remember UConn losing. That was a huge moment in college women’s basketball.”

Virginia Tech coach Kenny Brooks is a Dallas Cowboys fan, so he remembers seeing star quarterback Dak Prescott in the stands five years ago rooting for his alma mater, Mississippi State.

Prescott remembers the “huge moment” to which Staley referred. His reaction to Morgan William’s buzzer-beating game-winner in overtime made the rounds on social media five years ago.

“That was a surreal moment,” Brooks said. “But my surreal moment was last night.”

That’s when the No. 1 seed Hokies beat Ohio State 84-74 to reach their first Final Four in Brooks’ seventh season. Iowa, which beat Louisville 97-83 in the Elite Eight, has advanced this far for the first time since 1993, when Stringer became the first coach to lead multiple teams to the Final Four.

Stringer had done it with Cheyney in the inaugural tournament season of 1982, and after the Iowa trip, she went twice more with Rutgers in 2000 and 2007.

“She called me immediately after we beat Louisville,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “In fact, she was my first voice message I got that night. I know coach Stringer is behind us. I haven’t been able to get back to her yet, but I will soon.”

Mulkey’s Bears were one of the top seeds in 2017, hoping to chase a title just up the road from their Waco campus. Mississippi State beat Baylor in overtime in the Elite Eight before the OT thriller against UConn.

The Tigers are this deep in the tournament for the first time since the last of five consecutive Final Four appearances in 2008, all of which ended in the semifinals.

Mulkey was asked if she felt the burden of living up to those glory years.

“We’ve already done that,” said Mulkey, who has now reached the NCAA Tournament in 19 consecutive seasons as a coach. “Winning a national championship will only put an exclamation mark on it. We have exceeded probably what anybody could just realistically say was possible this quickly.”

Black female athletes: Having Black female coach is crucial

Associated PressMar 28, 2023, 9:32 PM EDT

Getty Images

South Carolina senior guard Brea Beal knew she could trust Dawn Staley before she even suited up for the Gamecocks.

It wasn’t just Staley’s coaching accolades, which include fueling South Carolina’s meteoric rise in women’s basketball, that sold Beal. Beal knew that Staley – a Black woman like her – would best understand how to guide her as she navigated both life and playing basketball on a big stage.

“People that were telling me what this community was about, I know it’s somewhere I wanted to be,” Beal said. “As soon as I got here, she definitely led me down a journey so I could find out who I am.”

Black female representation in the coaching and sports administrative ranks has existed on a minute scale – even in a sport like basketball, which along with track and field has the highest concentration of Black female college athletes. Black female players who have been coached by a Black woman told The Associated Press that it was crucial to their development.

“There are some coaches who will just have all guys with no understanding that there are sometimes things that a young woman may need to talk to another woman about,” said Kiki Barnes, a former basketball player and jumper at New Orleans and current Gulf Coast Athletic Conference commissioner.

While the number of women coaching women’s sports has increased in the past decade, Black women continue to lag behind most other groups. During the 2021-22 school year, 399 Black women coached women’s NCAA sports teams in Divisions I, II and III, compared with 3,760 white women and 5,236 white men.

In women’s NCAA basketball, a sport made up of 30% Black athletes, Black women made up 12% of head coaches across all divisions during the 2021-22 season, according to the NCAA’s demographics database.

Fourteen Black women led women’s basketball teams across 65 Power Five programs this past season – up one from 2021. That’s less than 22% of the total in a sport that was played by more Black athletes (40.7%) than any other race in Division I, according to a report with data from the 2020-21 season.

For the first time in a decade, four Black coaches advanced to the Sweet 16 of the women’s basketball tournament, including Staley, who said she believes it’s more popular to hire a woman at “this stage of the game.”

“And it’s not to say that I’m going to sit here and male bash, because we have a lot of male coaches who have been in our game for decades upon decades,” said Staley, who will lead her team into the Final Four this weekend. “But I will say that giving women an opportunity to coach women and helping women navigate through life like they have navigated through life will allow your student-athletes a different experience than having a male coach.”

For years Staley has been an advocate for hiring more female coaches – especially minorities – in college basketball, but WNBA player Angel McCoughtry said Black female coaches as successful as Staley are still too few and far between in the sport.

“When I was getting recruited in high school, I don’t remember having a Dawn Staley to look up to,” said McCoughtry, who played at Louisville from 2005-09.

McCoughtry also named Carolyn Peck, the first African American woman to coach her team to an NCAA women’s basketball title in 1999 with Purdue, as another example of representation in the sport.

“So there’s one or two every decade,” McCoughtry said. “Why can’t we have 10? There’s 10 Caucasian coaches every decade.”

McCoughtry, a former No. 1 overall pick by the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, got used to being around people who didn’t look like or understand her. She is Black. Her AAU and high school coaches were Black men. Her college coaches were white men. Marynell Meadors, a white woman, was her first coach in Atlanta.

She has fielded frustrating questions from white peers, coaches and owners – like how often she washes her hair, or whether her passionate play was because she was from Baltimore.

“There’s just a disconnect in understanding things,” the 36-year-old said, adding: “We need more coaches to protect us.”

McCoughtry has never had a Black female head coach but did have the impactful guidance of Michelle Clark-Heard, a Black woman whom Jeff Walz brought on as an assistant when he took over at Louisville in 2008.

She also leaned on Tim Eaton, a Black assistant coach who she said advocated for her in her freshman year, when then-coach Tom Collen wanted to send her back to Baltimore because she was late to one of her first practices. Similarly, McCoughtry said, she felt she had less room to make mistakes than white teammates. When she questioned a coach, she was labeled a troublemaker; when she got fired up about a play, she was told she had a bad attitude.

“We just never had any inch to be human, like our Caucasian counterparts,” she said, adding: “But who understands that? Our Black coaches. Because they went through everything we went through. They have a story, too.”

Part of the reason for the lack of Black female coaches is because of who ultimately holds the power to hire, Barnes said. That’s often athletic directors, a level where there is an even greater lack of diversity – 224 of 350 in Division I are white men. Plus, she added, there are changing requirements for what it takes to get leadership opportunities.

“And now the system has changed to where now you’ve got to know search firms because now search firms are the ones that are managing and determining who gets these opportunities,” she said. “Every time we understand how to get in the room and what it takes to be prepared, it’s like the rules change.”

Barnes played high school basketball in her hometown of Minden, Louisiana, where she had an assistant coach who was a Black woman; Barnes still refers to her as “Coach Smith.”

“For her, it wasn’t just about basketball. It was about who I was as a young lady,” Barnes recalled, adding, “I would say it’s similar with a young woman wanting to talk to a mom about womanly things. It’s not that a man couldn’t do it, but I wouldn’t feel as comfortable talking to either my dad or any other man about woman things.”

Priscilla Loomis, a 2016 Olympic high jumper who is Black, said she became a coach to provide kids that look like her the representation the sport has lacked. NCAA track and field numbers mirrored women’s basketball numbers in 2021-22: 5% of head coaches were Black women, while 19% of women’s NCAA track and field athletes are Black.

“They want so badly to feel seen and to feel loved and to be given guidance,” Loomis said. “And so that’s why I always say it’s important to get women of color, men of color to the starting line, because a lot of times we’re so many steps behind.”