With all due respect to the First Four, the real Madness begins Thursday. There is no formula for what will take place over the next few weeks, but past NCAA Tournaments have given us some insight into what we can expect, or at least attempt to predict.
Star power resides on the sideline
The big-name coaches get paid big bucks, millions per year — millions more than the players who make them look good — and this time of year they are the real stars. The big boys win titles, from Rick Pitino (Louisville) to Mike Krzyzewski (Duke), John Calipari (Kentucky) to Roy Williams (North Carolina), and Bill Self (Kansas) to retired UConn coach Jim Calhoun.
The last nondescript coach to cut down the nets at the Final Four was Tubby Smith back in 1998, and he did it with Kentucky.
This is good news for the blue bloods out there, such as Louisville, Duke and Kansas. Of course, Billy Donovan wasn't a big name before he led Florida to back-to-backs titles in 2006 and 2007, either.
Balance is key
We all go gaga over the great player, the one who will transcend the sport and carry his team on his back to a national championship as Kemba Walker did for UConn in 2011 or Carmelo Anthony did for Syracuse in 2003. Truth is, those are anomalies, not the norm.
Scoring depth and balance is what wins this time of year. The two most recent champions — Kentucky and Louisville — were teams full of NBA prospects and not built on one signature star. Look at this year's favorites: Florida, Arizona, Wichita State, Louisville, Michigan State. They don't rely on a star system, rather a number of key cogs capable of picking up one another.
The best players in the sport — Creighton's Doug McDermott, Duke's Jabari Parker, Kansas' Andrew Wiggins (if fellow star freshman Joel Embiid can't return from a back injury) — most likely are looking at March heartbreak.
Six games is a long time for one player to carry an entire team, which makes the accomplishments of Walker and Anthony the more spectacular in hindsight. Anthony Davis was the Naismith Player of the Year the season Kentucky won it all in 2012, but he is the only such honoree to win it all since Shane Battier and Duke in 2001.
Expect the unexpected in Final Four
Pick chalk at your own risk. All four top seeds have advanced to the Final Four just once (2008) in the last 10 years. Last season, for instance, Louisville was the only one-seed, joined by four-seeds Syracuse and Michigan and nine-seed Wichita State. The wackiest Final Four may have been in 2011, with No. 3 UConn winning it all, accompanied by No. 4 Kentucky, No. 8 Butler and No. 11 VCU — the second double-digit seed to reach the sport's biggest stage.
Since George Mason became the first true mid-major program to reach the Final Four in 2006, we've seen Butler get there twice, VCU once and Wichita State once. Who will be this year's Cinderella?
Is 15 the new 12?
The 12-5 upset remains as much a fixture of March Madness as office brackets and taking off work the first Thursday of the tournament, yet the 15-2 stunner has become more frequent. Prior to 2012, it had only happened four times, yet three 15 seeds have won first-round games in the last two years — Florida Gulf Coast knocking off Georgetown last year, plus Lehigh taking out Duke and Norfolk State doing the same to Missouri the year before. Don't say we didn't warn you.
Spartan seniors legacy up in air
Michigan State's senior class has a lot on the line over the next few weeks, beginning with avoiding the answer to the trivia question: What is the only Tom Izzo class to not reach a Final Four? Power forward Adreian Payne and point guard Keith Appling, among others, hope to avoid that indignity. Since Izzo took over in East Lansing in 1995, every one of his recruiting classes has been among the last four teams in college basketball, and this group — the four-seed in the East region following a Big Ten Tournament title — has a shot after an injury-marred regular season.
North of the border notoriety
Get used to hearing a lot about Canadian basketball. The sport is spreading to our neighbors north of the border. Two of the best freshmen in the country, Wiggins and Syracuse point guard Tyler Ennis, hail from Canada. The same goes for Iowa State star and Big 12 Player of the Year Melvin Ejim, and dynamic Michigan guard Nik Stauskas.
Twenty-five Canadians are in the NCAA Tournament. WAC champion New Mexico State has three, while Baylor, Stanford, Gonzaga and Wichita State have two apiece.
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