What’s at stake for each team in the Final Four

As a college basketball purist, the next three days are very bittersweet. The Final Four tips off in San Antonio tomorrow night with the Loyola-Chicago Ramblers and the Michigan Wolverines playing in the first national semifinal. It’s easy to be excited about Final Four weekend every year as it’s the biggest stage in the sport. But in a blink of an eye, it will be over, the One Shining Moment video will run and college hoops will disappear until the middle of November. Someone’s going to be crowned champion on Monday night, so here’s what it would mean for each school.

Loyola-Chicago: It’s hard not to fall in love with this story. By now, everyone knows the 98-year-old team chaplain Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, but the intrigue surrounding the Ramblers goes much further. Coach Porter Moser was fired from his last head coaching job at Illinois State in 2007. At that time, veteran coach Rick Majerus was set to take over the men’s basketball program at St. Louis University. Majerus brought Moser onto his staff in 2007 and it eventually led to Moser getting another chance at being a head coach as the Ramblers hired him in 2011. Majerus passed away of heart failure shortly thereafter in December 2012. Now, seven years after getting the gig at Loyola-Chicago, Moser finds himself in the Final Four and has given plenty of credit to the late Majerus for his rebirth as a head coach.

In many ways, the players on Moser’s roster have been through similar trials and tribulations. There are several transfers on Loyola’s roster whose collegiate careers have reached new heights. It starts with the Ramblers best player, junior guard Clayton Custer who was stuck behind Monte Morris at Iowa State and wasn’t playing much. Farleigh Dickinson transfer Marques Townes hit what would wind up being the game-winning field goal from three-point land in the closing seconds of the Sweet 16 victory against Nevada. Junior college transfer Aundre Jackson was the Missouri Valley Conference sixth man of the year last season in his first year with the Ramblers. The road gets a lot tougher for Loyola-Chicago, as it played just one team seeded in the top five of its region to get to San Antonio. Now it will have to go through the Big 10 Tournament champions in Michigan and a number one seed on Monday night. If the Ramblers can pull it off, it will conclude the greatest Cinderella run in the NCAA Tournament and they’ll become the lowest seed to ever win it all.

Michigan: Save for its Sweet 16 victory against Texas A&M, the Wolverines have epitomized the tournament cliché “Survive and Advance” in their other three wins in the big dance. By no means did Michigan look like a title contender in its opening game against Montana. If Jordan Poole’s 30-foot prayer wasn’t answered against Houston in the next round, John Beilein’s team wouldn’t have even advanced to the second weekend. In the West regional final, Florida State hung around all game and Moritz Wagner, Michigan’s best player, was just 3-for-11 from the field. With all of that said, none of it matters now. The Wolverines are one of four teams left standing and their play towards the end of the regular season, throughout the Big 10 conference tournament and in the Sweet 16 certainly had them looking like a team that could cut down the nets in San Antonio.

Two wins for Michigan would give the maize and blue their second national championship and it would be the first title for John Beilein, who’s done just about everything else in his coaching career. Before Beilein’s arrival, the Michigan men’s basketball program needed some juice as it had dipped into the abyss of mediocrity in the 10-15 years following the Fab Five era. The Wolverines did not make the big dance for ten straight seasons from 1999-2008. Beilein led them to an appearance in the National Championship game in 2013, got to the Elite Eight in 2014 and is now back in the Final Four.

Villanova: Villanova is the best team left and I don’t think many would argue against that claim. Not only did they dominate the Big East in the regular season and win the conference tournament, but the Wildcats looked clinical for almost all four of their NCAA Tournament wins. Jalen Brunson was just named National Player of the Year and Villanova was one of few teams this season that was consistently in the discussion of the best teams in the country. It’s not hard to argue that this team is better than the Villanova team from two years ago that won the National Championship.

This is Jay Wright’s third Final Four at Villanova. He got there in 2009, and overcame lots of struggles in the first weekend in the first half of this decade to get back in 2016 and eventually win the National Championship. Villanova’s done lots of winning under Wright and a third National Championship in school history, and second for Wright, would go a long way in cementing Villanova as one of the true “blue blood” programs in college basketball. It’s theirs to lose.

Kansas: Throughout all the chaos on the left side of the bracket, with a No. 9 vs a No. 11 seed playing in one regional final and another No. 9 seed getting to the other regional final, seeds held true for the most part on the right side of the bracket. Michigan State losing to Syracuse in the first weekend was shocking for sure, but through it all we had Villanova and Texas Tech in one regional final and Kansas-Duke in the other. The Jayhawks prevailed in what’s probably been the best game of the tournament so far and here they are back in the Final Four for the first time since 2012.

The Kansas roster is eerily like its opponent in the second national semifinal. Both Villanova and Kansas rely heavily on guard play and outside shooting. At times, Villanova plays through its primary frontcourt player in Omari Spellman much how Udoka Azubuike can take games over on both ends of the floor for Kansas. Devonte’ Graham’s storied college career will come to an end in Texas and a win on Monday night would be quite the way to close the book. Bill Self has taken a lot of heat for several losses in the regional weekend as a higher seed since winning the National Championship in 2008. If winning 14 straight Big 12 regular season titles doesn’t speak for itself, then two National Championships certainly should.

Five observations heading into March Madness

The field of 68 is set and First Four games in Dayton are underway. Here are five observations I made about the field heading into the big dance.

Bubble decisions: Before getting into who is in the field, it’s worth mentioning who is not. Notre Dame was the most obvious exclusion this year with Oklahoma State being another team that belonged in the field. The Irish went to Syracuse, a bubble team that made the field, without Bonzie Colson and Matt Farrell and won, yet Syracuse is playing in the big dance while Notre Dame was sent to the NIT. Oklahoma State also has two wins over Kansas while Arizona State finished eighth in an average Pac 12 and Oklahoma played nothing like an NCAA Tournament team down the stretch. The committee had more decisions to make regarding the bubble this year than it did last year, and it’s hard to agree with what they settled on.

Seeding mistakes: On top of some poor bubble calls, there were some clear seeding errors within the four regions. Arizona is entering the tourney off winning the Pac 12 tournament and has the best player in the country on its roster in DeAndre Ayton so coming in as a four seed in the South region was surprising for sure. On top of that, we could be in for an all-Wildcats matchup in the round of 32 with Kentucky falling on the five line and being sent to the same region as Arizona. John Calipari’s squad finished the regular season strong and won the SEC Tournament and that momentum figured to have Kentucky as a top four seed in its region but that wasn’t meant to be. It’s hard to sell me on Purdue having a better season than Michigan State yet the Boilermakers found themselves on the two line while Michigan State is a three seed in the Midwest region and could see Duke in the Sweet 16. In the West, North Carolina seemed to draw a two seed largely off its pedigree. The Tar Heels finished sixth in the regular season in the ACC and while they did make it to the final of the ACC Tournament, they’re another team that Michigan State had a better resume than.

Beware of the 5-12: The more you think about the way the committee seeds, the easier it gets to see why a 12 seed beats a five seed almost every year. This year the four teams on the 12 line are Davidson, South Dakota State, New Mexico State and Murray State. All four teams are automatic bids from mid-major conferences. Davidson stole a bid by beating Rhode Island in the A-10 championship game on Sunday and South Dakota State, New Mexico State and Murray State enter the big dance having all won at least 26 games. These are good teams that could all wind playing into the second weekend. When you win that many games, regardless of your schedule or your conference, winning a game or two in the tournament isn’t an unrealistic goal. Most of the time, 12 seeds profile the way these four do and they’re a dangerous draw for the five seed from the high-major league. To be honest, I’d be mildly surprised if New Mexico State didn’t beat Clemson in its first tournament game and like Murray State’s chances against West Virginia as well as South Dakota State’s odds to take down Ohio State.

Finding this year’s South Carolina: It wouldn’t be March without trying to take a stab at who might be the surprise team to get to the Elite Eight or Final Four. For five straight seasons, a team seeded seventh or lower has won its respective region and advanced to the final four. Last year it was Frank Martin’s South Carolina Gamecocks that shocked the world. South Carolina’s region opened in a big way when top-seeded Villanova lost in the round of 32 to Wisconsin.  So really what this comes down to each year is which region has some high seeds that are vulnerable and which lower seed will take advantage. Predicting the latter is nearly impossible which is the beauty of this tournament, but every year there is a region or two that is a little more open than the others and could lend itself to chaos. This year, the East and the West regions could be set up that way. I already mentioned how Purdue’s slightly over-seeded as a two in the East and Texas Tech is the three seed in the East and is making just its second tournament appearance in the last 10 years.  Out West, the consensus seems to be that Xavier is the softest number one seed and I also mentioned I thought North Carolina was over-seeded as the two in that region. If we get a surprise regional finalist or national semifinalist this year, my guess is it’s a result of chaos in the East or West.

The upset of all upsets: Hear me out. There was next to no consistency at the top of college basketball this year. Penn is the automatic bid out of the Ivy League and won 24 games this year and usually the Ivy League representative is shown a little more respect. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on the 16 seeds this year, or necessarily say that Penn beating Kansas is the one, but throughout the regular season, as more teams ranked in the top five continued to lose, I felt like it might be possible to see a 16 seed pull it off this year. Of course, I may not be at all close here, but let’s just say I’ll be watching the 1-16 games a little closer this year.