For college basketball fans throughout the country, March can mean only one thing: the NCAA Tournament.
With conference tournaments winding down this week and Selection Sunday only five days away, March Madness is right around the corner.
But it’s been almost a year since you filled in the final line on last year’s bracket, so before pressing “print” on this year’s batch, allow me to jog your memory about what we witnessed in 2011.
A year after knocking off perennial power Georgetown in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, our own Ohio Bobcats bowed out of the tournament chase early last year with an overtime loss to Ball State in the second round of the Mid-American Conference Tournament.
The Bobcats led the Cardinals by nine points with only 2:42 remaining in the game, but a late Ball State surge sent the game into overtime, where Ohio was eventually defeated 76-73.
An invitation to the CollegeInsider.com Tournament came with much less fanfare, as the Bobcats defeated Marshall before falling to East Tennessee State in a season-ending loss.
Though Ohio could not match its 2010 success, a few other mid-major teams were able to pick up the slack.
One of the biggest stories of the tournament was 11th-seeded Virginia Commonwealth, who barely sneaked into the tournament with an at-large bid.
The Rams were not expected to make it out of the first round, let alone get all the way to the Final Four.
Led by exuberant coach Shaka Smart, Virginia Commonwealth defeated Southern California, Georgetown, Purdue, Florida State and finally first-seeded Kansas to earn the school’s first-ever trip to the Final Four.
But the Rams were not the only mid-major team trying to crash the party. For the second consecutive year, Butler advanced to the Final Four and eventually to the national championship game.
The Bulldogs narrowly defeated Old Dominion and first-seeded Pittsburgh before running past Wisconsin and edging out Florida.
Butler and Virginia Commonwealth met in the semifinals, and the eighth-seeded Bulldogs earned their second consecutive trip to the final game.
At 9-9 in conference play, Connecticut entered the Big East Tournament as the No. 9 seed. But the Huskies won five games in five days to win the tournament behind the play of point guard Kemba Walker.
The run included wins against No. 3 Pittsburgh, No. 11 Syracuse and No. 14 Louisville and earned Connecticut a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
The 130 points that Walker scored in the Big East tournament broke former Ohio guard Armon Bassett’s record for most points scored in a conference tournament.
Bassett scored 116 in four games during Ohio’s 2010 MAC Tournament run.
Walker never cooled down, as he led the Huskies to six more wins and a national title. He was named the tournament’s most-outstanding player.
So as you prepare your pencil and eraser and begin to flood Alden’s second-floor printers with brackets, remember the only sure thing in March Madness is that there are no sure things.
Rob Ogden is a senior studying journalism and assistant sports editor of The Post. If you’ve filled out a what-if DARS for a minor in bracketology, email him at ro137807@ohiou.edu.
