"The 64 teams you find in every NCAA Tournament bracket"

The Game Room
1

I found the following on sbnation: The 64 teams you find in every NCAA Tournament bracket to be clever. It is a list of general bracket descriptions, for example:

  1. Star freshman filling out NBA Draft paperwork during commercials
  2. An 8-year-old will pick them as champs by accident and win your pool because of it
  3. Best GPAs in the tourney by far

My suggestions:

Still looking in awe at all the tall buildings.
For some reason all the players own expensive sports cars.
Thought name change would improve chances. It didn’t.
Last appearance was during the Eisenhower administration.

2

East coast team playing in Western regional disoriented because they’re jetlagged.
Got in because they won the conference tournament but their only good player was injured.
Secretly mad because they would’ve had a better time in the NIT.

3
  • Coach of team playing against team of former mentor.
  • Team with celebrity alumnus in the crowd.
  • Team with a player whose funny nickname the crowd chants but is otherwise unknown so the announcers have to explain to the viewing audience what exactly the crowd is chanting.
  • Team that fights for every loose ball.
  • Bubble team exiting the first day.
  • Team that has no quit in them.
4

  • Tom Izzo’s latest random assortment of student’s that will make the Sweet 16

  • The group of seniors that “really deserve this win”

  • The catchy Cinderella team that loses in the second round

  • The “athletic” team with mostly black players

  • The “scrappy” team with mostly white players

5

There was a time when you were allowed to choose - until, in 1970, Marquette chose the NIT; I am assuming the school figured it would get three home games and make more money because of it (this was before the current massive TV contract for the NCAA tournament, although half of that money goes to the conferences and another third goes mainly to the football schools as it’s based on the number of scholarships, heavily weighing those past 150).

Ever since then, the NCAA came up with a rule: “If you are invited to an NCAA championship tournament, you have the right to refuse, but if you do, then your season is over.” (For example, the Ivy League will not accept any invitations to the FCS football tournament.) There is one exception: you can schedule a “regular season” game that takes place after the tournament begins, as long as the date, location, and teams involved were scheduled by the start of the season. The only one I can think of is the annual Grambling-Southern football game. Note that the rule does apply to the MEAC and SWAC football champions in that if one or both are chosen to play in the NCAA FCS tournament, they cannot refuse and then play in the Celebration (formerly Heritage) Bowl.

6
  • The team playing with a heavy heart.
  • The team with the best sixth man.
  • The team with the player with the wild hair.
  • The team with a lot to prove.
  • The team you can never count out.
  • The team whose coach stresses the fundamentals.
7

The all-underclassmen team that’s going to be really something to watch next season.
The suburban branch of the big state university that didn’t even have a basketball program ten years ago.
The team trying to win it all for the old coach who never had a group of men like this before.
The team that dedicated its season to that one player who was in a terrible car accident/has a terrible disease/suffered a terrible loss just as the season began.
The 65th seed who’s never been in the tourney but managed to win the play-in game and now has to play the overall #1 seed.