INDIANAPOLIS — Almost every March, there’s at least one lovable underdog that rises from obscurity in the NCAA Division I men’s tournament to capture the hearts of basketball fans and bust their brackets.
Not this year.
All 16 regional semifinalists were from power conferences for the first time since the bracket expanded to 64 teams in 1985. The popular theory is that the NCAA’s transfer portal has led to a concentration of the best players at the big schools paying the most NIL money and, soon, the most through revenue sharing.
Is this year just an anomaly? Purdue coach Matt Painter, whose 2023 tourney team became the second No. 1 seed of all time to lose to a No. 16 seed (Fairleigh Dickinson), sure hopes so.
“The upsets and how valuable the upsets are to the common fan, it’s created March Madness,” he said Thursday. “Let’s not get away from it. It’s a big piece of March Madness.”