The NCAA men’s college basketball tournament, colloquially known as March Madness, is here again. You’ve got questions? I’ve got answers.
I’ve watched zero minutes of college basketball this year. Is there still a reason for me to follow the tournament?
We’re not so different, you and I. The last college basketball team I followed closely was the 1995–96 Northwestern Wildcats, who went 7–20 and were very bad at basketball. (I, too, was very bad at basketball, so I empathized.) Anyway, I don’t really watch college basketball during the regular season—I have no particular rooting interest and college basketball just isn’t as good as the pro game. But that’s why the tournament is so much fun. You never know what’s going to happen. Granted, you never know what’s going to happen in the emergency room, either.
Who are some of the players I should look out for?
Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield, a strong contender for national player of the year, is a great scorer and a bit of a throwback: a senior star in an era when the best players rarely stay in college for more than a couple of years. Denzel Valentine from Michigan State is also a senior guard with NBA potential; he’s got a great all-around game—bet on him to put up a triple-double at some point. Maryland has Diamond Stone and Melo Trimble, two great players with great names that go great together. Virginia has a player named Jack Salt. (Jack Salt!) You should also watch for UNC–Asheville’s Italian big man, 6-foot-9 Giacomo Zilli. You probably won’t see him in a game, because Zilli doesn’t get off the bench, but you can improve your chances of a Zilli sighting by constantly saying things like “Where’s Giacomo Zilli?” and “We want Giacomo Zilli!”
Giacomo Zilli?
Giacomo Zilli!
That’s fun to say! OK, what’s the best team in the tournament?
According to the AP and USA Today polls, as well as the NCAA selection committee, the best team in the tournament is Kansas. The top-ranked Jayhawks, the No. 1 seed in the South region, won 30 games this year behind the strong play of senior forward Perry Ellis—he averages 16.7 points per game and produces a hell of a pair of slacks—and the old-school leadership of three-point-shot-hating coach Bill Self. The other top-seeded teams are pretty good, too! Oregon, the No. 1 seed in the West, has a great offense that gives opponents fits; they destroyed an excellent Utah team in the Pac-12 tournament. They are coached by Dana Altman, who is not the same person as Robert Altman’s grandson Dana Altman, whom I met at a screening of Popeye in Omaha last year. Just in case you were wondering. North Carolina forward Brice Johnson is a really good player, and coach Roy Williams is the country’s foremost “Roy.” The Tar Heels are the top seed in the East, and they should go far. Virginia is the No. 1 seed in the Midwest thanks to the play of senior guard Malcolm Brogdon and the calming bench presence of the gargantuan Jack Salt; the Cavaliers have something to prove after their relatively early exits from the tournament in 2014 and 2015. The team that ousted Virginia both times? The Michigan State Spartans, who are seeded second in the Midwest this year, and could have easily been seeded first. Watch out for Michigan State.
Which teams are the best underdogs?
Depends on how you define best, I guess. If by best you mean least likely to win, then it’s hard to get better than the Holy Cross Crusaders, who went 10–19 in the regular season, lost all nine road conference games, and yet won the Patriot League postseason tournament to clinch a March Madness berth. Holy Cross will play Southern on Wednesday; the winner of that contest gets the No. 16 seed in the West and the opportunity to lose to Oregon on Friday. I’m fond of the Stony Brook Seawolves, out of Long Island, seeded 13th in the East. Stony Brook made its first-ever NCAA tournament this year behind senior forward and gyro enthusiast Jameel Warney, who scored 43 points in the America East conference tournament title game, shooting an absurd 18-of-22 from the floor. Warney stays in the paint, takes high percentage shots, and rarely misses. Stony Brook faces Kentucky in its first-round game, so that’s your ultimate underdog vs. overdog matchup. Go Seawolves! Gyros are delicious!
I actually don’t like underdogs or gyros. I’m just looking for exciting and lovable teams who also have a shot to go deep into the tournament. Which teams should I root for?
I’ll give you one for each region. In the South, you should root for Connecticut, the No. 9 seed. If you believe in momentum—and you really shouldn’t, but it’s your journey—then the Huskies have it: They beat Cincinnati in quadruple overtime in their conference tournament, and then beat Temple and Memphis to win the tournament and secure their spot in March Madness. They face off against the Colorado Buffaloes, coached by Tad Boyle, whose Wikipedia page helpfully notes that “in 1979, Boyle went to homecoming with Terri Lauer.” In the West, I’d root for Northern Iowa, the 11 seed. The Panthers can play with the best—they actually beat North Carolina in November. Plus, Cedar Falls is a short drive from Dyersville, where Field of Dreams was filmed. Do the Panthers have it in them to “go the distance?” Only Kevin Costner knows for sure! In the East, I’d suggest rooting for the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks, who have won 20 consecutive games, and who will give West Virginia a spot of trouble in their first-round matchup. The Lumberjacks are led by senior forward Thomas Walkup, who is very good at basketball and at FIFA 15. In the Midwest, No. 8 seed Texas Tech is a decent choice. Texas Tech is coached by Tubby Smith. It’s hard to root against Tubby Smith.
Let’s talk matchups. What are some of the best?
There are a few first-round matchups that ought to be exciting. Start your Thursday afternoon viewing off right by toggling between the 12:15 matchup between No. 4 Duke and No. 13 UNC-Wilmington in the West, and the 12:40 game between No. 8 Texas Tech and No. 9 Butler in the Midwest. Duke lost 10 games this year, and UNC-Wilmington should keep things close if they get off to a hot start. I’m very excited to watch the Thursday night game between Kentucky and Stony Brook’s Jameel “Gyro” Warney in the East. On Friday afternoon at 1:30, No. 7 Oregon State vs. No. 10 VCU in the West will be a good game; No. 5 Maryland vs. No. 12 South Dakota State at 4:15 will be closer than people expect. Later that night, at 9:50 p.m., No. 11 Northern Iowa versus No. 6 Texas will be a corker; I think UNI has a good chance to win, but I’m a fan of Texas coach Shaka Smart, who outperformed expectations during his stint at VCU and has done the same in his first year with the Longhorns. In 2011, Smart’s brother, the film writer J.M. Tyree, wrote a fun piece for Slate about what it was like being related to “the hottest name in March Madness.” Among the takeaways: Shaka Smart “likes nature documentaries featuring big cats.” Who doesn’t?
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Are there any particular teams or players I should be rooting against?
Did you hate Christian Laettner and J.J. Redick? Then you’ll probably hate Duke’s Grayson Allen, the latest in a long line of annoying Duke players. Allen, who averages 21.6 points per game, is known for tripping other players. He also looks like Ted Cruz. Hating Duke makes sense. But much as the tournament is an opportunity to develop and indulge short-term rooting interests, it’s also a chance to indulge frenzied, irrational hatred. So just pick a random team to cheer against. I suggest the Gonzaga Bulldogs, the epitome of mid-major mediocrity, a team that makes the tournament every year and never, ever wins. Gonzaga has four players 6-foot-10 or taller, one of whom is the son of former NBA player Arvydas Sabonis. A Google search for “Arvydas Sabonis scandal” brings back exactly zero results, which seems fitting. Arvydas Sabonis was boring. Gonzaga is boring. Man, screw Gonzaga!
Who is the tallest player in the tournament? The shortest?
The tallest guy might be 7-foot-2 Purdue center Isaac Haas. Unlike most freakishly tall college ballers, Haas can actually play: He averaged 9.9 points per game. As for short players, Christian Pino of Buffalo is 5-foot-7, as is Gregory Hayden of Hampton. Pino played for Buffalo coach Nate Oats when Oats was coaching high school in Michigan. Hayden’s nickname is “Pierre,” and he studies sports management. He can play, too!
Which team has the weirdest mascot?
That would be the Chattanooga Mocs. What is a Moc, you rightly ask? (“For more than a decade, this question has puzzled many fans and observers of Chattanooga Athletics,” the official Mocs site reads.) “Moc” officially stands for “mockingbird,” but that wasn’t always the case. When Slate took a deep dive into this topic back in 2005, Chris Park found that “for nearly a century the school has snatched aimlessly from a grotesque mascot grab bag filled to the brim with half-realized creatures, ethnic stereotypes, and footwear.” (In the 1980s, Chattanooga’s mascot was a shoe.) Now, their mascot is Scrappy Moc, an anthropomorphic mockingbird named after the longtime Chattanooga football coach “Scrappy” Moore.
David Purdy/Getty Images
The Wisconsin-Green Bay team is called the Phoenix, and the mascot is Phlash the Phoenix. The Phoenix is lame mostly because it isn’t a Fighting Tomato. The school’s own website tells the sad story: In 1970, UW–Green Bay held a student contest to choose the school’s mascot, and, in the counter-cultural spirit of the times, the students reportedly came out in droves to vote for the Fighting Tomatoes, only to see—again, allegedly—the name disqualified because the judges deemed it stupid. Man, reading a story like this makes me understand what those malcontents in SNCC were rebelling against!
I love it when coaches coach their own kids in the tournament. Are there any father-son storylines to look out for this year?
Yes! Tres Tinkle, son of Oregon State coach Wayne Tinkle, is the Beavers’ second leading scorer this year. The younger Tinkle, a freshman forward, was a very good player coming out of high school; on the day he committed to Oregon State, according to Connor Letourneau at the Oregonian, he wrote his father a card that read, “If I could have one wish, it would be becoming an Oregon State Beaver and playing for the greatest coach in the entire world.” Tres Tinkle is nursing a foot injury and hasn’t played lately, and it remains to be seen if he’ll be on the floor for the Beavers’ Friday game against VCU. Tinkle is the cream of the coaches’-kid crop this year. Bray Barnes, son of CSU Bakersfield coach Rod Barnes, played in 19 games for the Roadrunners this season. Tyler Self, son of Kansas coach Bill Self, played a whopping 28 minutes this year. Corey Haith, son of Tulsa coach Frank Haith, is technically on the Golden Hurricane roster, but he didn’t play at all in 2015–16; the same is true for Stephen F. Austin guard Tyler Underwood, son of coach Brad Underwood.
I own a small but growing hair gel manufacturer, and would like to hire a college basketball coach to endorse my product. Which of this year’s coaches has the most heavily gelled hair?
Well, since you’re a small company, you probably don’t have the resources necessary to hire a major-conference gel-head like Kentucky’s John Calipari. But Matt McCall, the 34-year-old coach of the mid-major Chattanooga Mocs, is an up-and-coming gel user, as is 37-year-old Archie Miller of the Dayton Flyers. And as long as we’re talking coaches and their hair, I’d like to preemptively explain what’s going on with Providence Friars coach Ed Cooley, whose head is covered in bald patches, the result of a skin condition that leaves him hairless in spots. Cooley is also known for losing more than 100 pounds a few years ago thanks to weight reduction surgery and an odd liquid diet heavily biased toward oatmeal-based protein shakes.
How do you pronounce “Austin Peay”?
Austin rhymes with Boston, and Peay rhymes with three. Here are three fun facts about the 16th-seeded Austin Peay State University and its men’s basketball program. Their team is called the Governors. The school is named after former Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay, who banned the teaching of evolution in the state’s public schools, built lots of highways, and died in office. This is one of the first years Austin Peay basketball has been relevant since the heyday of James “Fly” Williams, who starred for the school in the 1970s, and whose nickname led to the immortal student-section chant “The Fly is open. Let’s go Peay!”
Who will make the Final Four?
As a licensed and bonded soothsayer, I urge you to put all your money on Kansas, Michigan State, Oklahoma, and, oh, let’s say Xavier.
Which bracket is going to be the winning bracket?
Debbie’s bracket.
