How bizarre and bewildering is this 2017-18 men’s college basketball season 27 days from the NCAA tournament’s Selection Sunday?
Consider this: When the NCAA announced its preliminary top four seeds in each regional Sunday, three of the top six and five of the 16 had lost Saturday. Beyond that, four others had lost the game they’d played before the weekend, and two of the 16 – No. 1 seed Purdue and No. 4 seed Oklahoma – lost twice over the past week.
If that doesn’t strongly hint of one wild ride come March Madness, nothing does. But that also doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fun – at least as long as Duke isn’t given its usual yellow brick road to the Final Four – or that we might not finally have someone come from nowhere (Alabama, Missouri or Texas Tech, perhaps?) to shock the world.
In a season in which so many of the traditional blue bloods – Kansas, Kentucky and UCLA, to name but three – appear to be less than their best, this could be the year for a traditional Power Five conference also-ran or an outsider to deliver one shining moment to an unsuspecting yet delirious fan base.
Or North Carolina and its ageless point guard, Joel Berry II, just might reach their third straight title game on the way to repeating as NCAA champs.