Special Event: Special Event: March Madness! NCAA basketball tournaments 2024

March 17, 2024 6:30 PM

March, March, it's March again, how does this keep happening. LSU is the defending Women's D1 Winner, and UConn is the defending men's champion (and UConn has quite possibly the cutest mascot in basketball in Jonathan the Husky).

Women's Schedule:

https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-women/article/2024-03-17/2024-march-madness-womens-ncaa-tournament-schedule-dates-times

Women's bracket challenge:
https://fantasy.espn.com/tc/sharer?challengeId=241&from=espn&context=GROUP_INVITE&edition=espn-en&groupId=d894a10f-134b-419e-8254-cd0e3564f458&joinKey=48d62159-03df-3562-b8e5-2e8891380c8f (group name is Metafilter 2024, password is blue), brackets lock Friday, 3/22 @ 11:30a ET

Men's schedule:

https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2024-03-17/2024-march-madness-mens-ncaa-tournament-schedule-dates

Men's bracket challenge:
https://fantasy.espn.com/tc/sharer?challengeId=240&from=espn&context=GROUP_INVITE&edition=espn-en&groupId=f67ff2e6-1af3-42f6-a8c0-b2f3da129197&joinKey=48d62159-03df-3562-b8e5-2e8891380c8f (group name is Metafilter 2024, password is blue), brackets lock Thursday, 3/21 @ 12:15p ET

posted by joycehealy (27 comments total)

LSU is the defending women's champion.
posted by epj at 12:07 PM on March 18

Oh heck, I knew I messed something up. I will get a mod to edit.
posted by joycehealy at 12:19 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

No problem! As an Iowa fan, I remember the title game with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
posted by epj at 12:23 PM on March 18 [2 favorites]

I don't follow college basketball, but every year I am excited for the MeFi bracket challenges. My proven strategy of just choosing the favored team unless I like the underdog's name better is a guaranteed winner.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:40 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

Article that I saw go by on Bluesky: Kim Mulkey is an asshole.
posted by fleacircus at 3:13 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]

I'm in--good luck, everybody!
posted by box at 8:04 AM on March 21

Busted on game two. Did y'all know that an 11th seed wins basically every year? I did not, but I did take NCSU over Texas Tech. Unfortunately, I also took BYU over Duquesne.

Also, I'm extremely annoyed at the NCAA page. Max is not a "cable provider." So I can either watch the inferior Max product which doesn't have the games and times going down the side of the page, has a stupid-ass video player that doesn't hide the controls properly, and includes very bad commercials like a promo for some murder program with Paula Zahn, or I can try and scrounge a cable log in and so far no dice on that.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:09 PM on March 21

I'm a big nerd for sports uniforms, so I am assessing each game on that basis. Loved the Mississippi State retro vibe. Duquesne had some interesting ideas. Creighton's little feather detail was fun. Wagner's JV-looking unis against UNC's classic is almost as bad a blowout as the game itself. Always a fan of Oregon's use of highlighter yellow.

Go (NC State) Wolfpack! It was so much fun watching them win 5 games in 5 days to take the ACC title. I love the fact that they won more games in DC last week than the Wizards have won all season.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:37 PM on March 21 [4 favorites]

The lowest scoring game in NCAA tournament history occurred when Pittsburgh beat North Carolina by a final score of 26-20 in the 1941 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. I don’t know what made me think of looking that up.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:43 PM on March 21

Loving Oakland’s evening-ready lewk, the Jackrabbits have a perfect script wordmark, but McNeese State is the worst so far. The white panel on the back of the shorts makes it look like they are wearing too-long undershirts or something.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:07 PM on March 21

The end of Oakland/KY was so much fun y’all.
posted by joycehealy at 6:38 PM on March 21 [2 favorites]

I aged about 100 years watching the Samford game.
posted by fleacircus at 11:07 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

I saw online that there may have been bad calls in the Samford game and I can’t even go read about it because I’ll just get annoyed. But y’all, my Wolfpack. I couldn’t stay up and watch the game because I’m running a conference this morning and had to get some sleep, but Kevin Keats is doing something special no matter what they do in the rest of this tournament.
posted by joycehealy at 2:47 AM on March 22 [1 favorite]

But y’all, my Wolfpack. I couldn’t stay up and watch the game because I’m running a conference this morning and had to get some sleep, but Kevin Keats is doing something special no matter what they do in the rest of this tournament.

It was a hell of a game, but honestly, the 'Pack could have played better. The starters were rescued by Middlebrooks stepping up and by Texas Tech being willing to play down to State's level when we started out slow, though they did do a good job defending Brooks. State looked really gassed (understandably!), especially at the end of the first half. If they had been firing on all cylinders it would have been a bloodbath.

Now we get to be the Big Bad Wolfpack and blow down Oakland's house of twigs (amazing how fast I made the mental switch from Oakland as adorable upstarts to sworn enemy) on the way to the Sweet 16! Don't give up, don't ever give up!
posted by Rock Steady at 9:48 AM on March 22 [2 favorites]

I saw online that there may have been bad calls in the Samford game

There was one bad call everyone thinks was crucial. But because it went in favor of my team, I can be philosophical and unbiased about it and take the long view; only I can rise above the howling, wild-eyed masses drunk for the taste of my noble-but-beleaguered team's blood. (We'll get utterly annihilated by Gonzaga Saturday anyway.)
posted by fleacircus at 12:59 PM on March 22 [1 favorite]

I was on a conference call and missed the Samford game. Watching the highlights now. I definitely would have looked like a genius if they had pulled it out, but I only picked them because I went to debate camp there 40 years ago.

“Late Comeback Falls Just Short In NCAA Tournament Loss To Kansas,” Samford University Athletics, 22 March 2024

“MBB: Post Game, Kansas (NCAA Tournament) Interviews”—22 March 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 1:49 PM on March 22

Yale v. Auburn: 😵🥴💀
posted by ob1quixote at 4:26 PM on March 22 [3 favorites]

We were counting underseed wins at dinner and it's a lot already.
posted by joycehealy at 6:14 PM on March 22

So apparently I’m now the one that gets to wax philosophical about bad officiating? (I haven’t actually seen the officiating in question yet, we were out at dinner with a friend and I was just checking the score on my phone, which is probably better all around for my blood pressure from what I’ve heard.)
posted by joycehealy at 6:49 PM on March 23

We were watching the State men on the big screen and the women on a laptop (because, frankly, I had much more faith that the women were going to win) and we had the men on a little bit of a delay because we'd had to cook dinner and stuff, so I got to see my teams win within about 30 seconds of each other, not the real time 5 minutes or so that it was.

SURVIVE AND ADVANCE!
posted by joycehealy at 8:33 PM on March 29 [2 favorites]

joycehealy will return from the moon shortly.
posted by LionIndex at 6:18 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]

And yet, my men’s bracket is still 10 out of 11, lol.

I am mostly still in shock. Both teams, in games they weren’t supposed to win? Resounding victories? I hope that Jimmy V and Kay Yow, in whatever may come after this, are very pleased right now.
posted by joycehealy at 6:46 PM on March 31 [3 favorites]

I kept saying to myself "Is this really happening?" Bummed I had to miss a send-off celebration for the men here on campus because I had a meeting.

I saw that the Iowa-LSU game set a record for women's CBB and had higher ratings than many of 2023's top sporting events (World Series, NBA Finals, various Bowl games).
posted by Rock Steady at 11:19 AM on April 3 [2 favorites]

… what foul?

Go Gamecocks!
posted by joycehealy at 7:20 AM on April 6

It was a good run and a fun time!
posted by joycehealy at 5:49 PM on April 6 [3 favorites]

The ratings for the Final were pretty good: South Carolina’s NCAA Championship Win Over Iowa Delivers Record-Breaking 18.7 Million Viewers. What a great season of basketball.
posted by eckeric at 8:09 AM on April 9

Also, this year's tournament has turned my daughter and her girlfriend into full-fledged college basketball fans. Mostly the NC State men's team (DJ Burns will do that), but we all went to a campus watch party for the women's game against SC that was a ton of fun. They are already talking about next year's recruits!
posted by Rock Steady at 12:28 PM on April 9 [3 favorites]