And now it gets really interesting again. With California and Lamar now summarily dismissed from the CoM, we’re down to the traditional group of 64 teams — win six games from this point and you’re the last team standing. Sixteen more schools will be eliminated by just after Midnight ET tonight.
It sure didn’t appear like it would end this way, but Mississippi Valley State and Iona were eliminated in dramatic fashion last night. From 68 to 66, with two more gone after tonight…
In the vein of what we did last week with our conference tournament Podblasts, this week we’re supplementing our overall bracket Podcast with four region-specific podblasts utilizing each of our experts who will be reporting on different regions throughout the NCAA Tournament. Today we’ll be discussing the East Region with Brian Otskey and the South Region with Kevin Doyle, both of whom really know these brackets inside and out.
East Region Podblast
South Region Podblast
RTC is pleased to announce a contest for this year’s NCAA Tournament that will result in one lucky winner receiving a 32″ Toshiba HDTV with 1080p and 3D capabilities. The MSRP on this thing is just under a cool grand ($949.99), but for the person who nails this week’s contest (or comes closest), he or she will get it shipped directly to their door for free. Enough about that — how do you win? The contest specs are below.
There are four steps to this contest, but they’re really easy and will only take you one minute or less to complete.
DEADLINE: Noon ET, Thursday March 15. One entry per person. No exceptions.
That’s it. The The rest is up to how the ball bounces on Thursday and Friday — a BIG thank you to Toshiba for providing this prize, and GOOD LUCK!!!
And just like that, we are now down to 68 teams vying for a national title. By this time next Sunday, there will be only 16. We’ll continue to update the Circle of March as the remaining teams are eliminated.
For the last week or so, we’ve been writing up brief descriptions of what to consider on each of the 31 automatic qualifiers for the NCAA Tournament. While it’s true that there are 37 other NCAA teams in the field, we’re going to bank on the fact that you already know most of those. This series will help you break down many of the smaller conference teams that you may not have seen play all season (or at most, once). And keep in mind that we’ll be coming hard with analysis on each region Monday and game-by-game breakdowns as well throughout the week. The best time of the year is here, folks — let’s enjoy it!
For the entire series of posts, click here. Otherwise find the team(s) you’re interested in below.
East Region
South Region
Midwest Region
West Region
Twenty more eliminations on Friday and 10 more on Saturday means that there are now only 82 teams still alive with hopes and dreams of the 2012 National Championship. Of course, the actual number is somewhat less than that, but we’re not going to get in the business of predicting the whims of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee here — that’s for the bracketologists and others to do. Tomorrow’s four championship games won’t help solve that problem, but a certain television show that broadcasts on CBS at 6:00 PM ET certainly will. We’ll see you again when we have the 68 locked in…
It certainly wasn’t the most compelling day of basketball we’ve ever seen on a Thursday of Championship Week, but sexy or not, 38 more teams were eliminated from national title contention yesterday. This now leaves us with 111 total teams remaining, and from here on through the weekend, we’re going to tend to be over-inclusive when it comes to bubble teams. You just never know what the Selection Committee will do (see: UAB, 2011), and for that reason alone we’re going to keep most any team in the bubble discussion on our Circle of March. Still, over the next 72 hours, we’d expect to drop another 25-30 schools to get to a healthy 80 or so going into the unveiling of the brackets Sunday night.
Another huge day of games awaits us today, but no championship games until tomorrow, when 12 will be played…
Due to technical difficulties Tuesday night, we weren’t able to get a new Circle of March up in time for Wednesday’s games, so this is a two-fer. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, another 43 teams were eliminated from national title contention, leaving us with a total of 149 teams now left. Thursday and Friday will be huge days, as 14 conference tournaments will be in action with many of them at the knockout-heavy first or quarterfinal round.
There’s only about 78 hours until we’ve narrowed this thing down to 68 teams vying for the ring. The names drop off quickly, don’t they?
Ain’t no party like a Twitter party, or so the kids say these days.
Later this afternoon, from 3-4 PM ET, Microsoft search engine Bing has invited RTC to take part in its March Madness Twitter party. We’ve never been a part of one of these events, but it seemed like an interesting way to spend an hour ‘chatting’ about college hoops heading into the best three weeks of the year, so we’re on board.
Join Us at 3 PM Eastern Time This Afternoon
To participate, follow @Bing and @rushthecourt and tweet out your questions and commentary with the hashtag #BingIt. As an added bonus, Bing will be giving away a fifty dollar gift card to two lucky winners. We hope to enjoy some great conversation this afternoon — see you there!
Overnight 5: February 16, 2023
2021-22 Rush The Court Preseason All-America TeamsRTC 16: 2021-2022 Pre-Season Rankings
Preseason Stock Report: Buy Now
Preseason Stock Report: Bear Market
2020-21 Rush the Court All-America Teams and Yearly AwardsEight Questions for the Final FourEight Key Questions for the Sweet Sixteen16 Questions For First Round Saturday of the NCAA Tournament16 Questions for First Round Friday of the NCAA Tournament
