Before I look ahead, let’s quickly look back. This weekend featured plenty of NCAA tournament level drama:

Best End Game Execution: Oklahoma led Kansas by three points in the final seconds and the Sooners wanted to foul to avoid allowing a three point attempt. Kansas knew this, and to counter the Jayhawks ran the famous Valparaiso play. The Jayhawks threw a deep pass to a forward who immediately tapped the ball back to guard Frank Mason. Mason caught the ball in shooting position beyond the three point arc, and when Oklahoma fouled, all they did was send Mason to the line for three shots. Mason made all three shots to tie the game. Even when a team wants to give the foul up three, if you execute perfectly you can avoid it. But Oklahoma also executed flawlessly. The Sooners aggressively brought the ball down court and shot quickly enough that there was enough time for a put-back. And Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield tapped in the game-winning put-back. There shouldn’t be a loser when both teams execute so perfectly.

Better to Be Lucky than Good Moment: Not only did Belmont’s Taylor Barnette hit a ridiculous step-back three to beat Murray St. and make the NCAA tournament. But Barnette also banked in a step-back three pointer two minutes earlier! Sometimes to break a team’s 25-game winning streak, you need to make a few breaks.

Best Surprise Hero: Louisville’s Mangok Mathiang had scored all of 8 points in February and March. Thus at the end of regulation, Virginia knew they had to stop Terry Rozier or Montrezl Harrell from taking the game-winning shot. But with Rozier pressured and Harrell covered, Rozier found Mathiang at the free-throw line. And the quiet Louisville center calmly nailed the game-winner, knocking off a team many project as a 1-seed in the NCAA tournament.

Best Buzzer Beater that May or May Not be Shown Over and Over Again: In double OT, trailing by two points, William & Mary’s Daniel Dixon hit a three with 0.5 seconds left to send William & Mary to the CAA final. William & Mary has never been to the NCAA tournament. If they win Monday, you’ll see Dixon’s shot at least twice on CBS/TBS/TNT/TruTV during William & Mary’s first round NCAA tournament game. If they lose Monday, you will never see it again.

Best Buzzer Beater that is Irrelevant, Unless You Love Seniors: Penn St. has had a dreadful Big Ten season, which may cost DJ Newbill a spot on the all-Big Ten first-team. But that’s too bad, because he’s scored over 1700 points in just three years in Happy Valley. On an offensively challenged team, he’s somehow posted a 110 ORtg along with a 30% usage rate. Newbill is absolutely a star. And on Sunday, in a tie-game, while closely guarded he hit a lean-back three for the buzzer-beating win at Minnesota.

Best Insane “Carried Team on Back” Effort in Loss: Tulsa faced SMU for the American Conference regular season title on Sunday. You know some player is going to have an individually brilliant game in an NCAA tournament loss. Well Tulsa’s Jordan Woodard made 10 of 16 threes on Sunday, but it wasn’t enough, and SMU won the league title.

Best Heartwarming Moment: Georgetown senior Tyler Adams, diagnosed with a heart condition and forced to retire four games into his college career, was given a waiver and allowed to dunk by the Seton Hall players.

Best Honorary Bracket Spoiling: Inevitably, you will be excited about a particularly great Elite Eight matchup, and some team will pull an upset and deny you the match-up you wanted to see. But it sometimes produces a good game anyway. Illinois St. upset Wichita St. in the MVC semifinals, denying fans the Northern Iowa vs Wichita St. rubber match. But the Northern Iowa vs Illinois St. game was brilliant anyway. Illinois St. led 36-22 at halftime, but somehow Northern Iowa went on a 25-4 run and saved the day for the “last team in” next week. If Illinois St. had won, the at-large field would have been one spot smaller, but the Redbirds came up just short. Seriously, whoever is seeded at the bottom of the S-Curve needs to send Northern Iowa head coach Ben Jacobson a card. With his team trailing big at half-time and playing poorly, he told the half-time reporter that everything was going to work out fine, and he was right.

Consolation Schaudenfeude: Stanford lost its final three games of the year, including a tough loss to Arizona St. and a blowout loss to Arizona. Despite having Top 25 margin-of-victory numbers at the end of January, Stanford no longer looks like an NCAA tournament team. At moments like these, the only thing a fan of a team can do is take solace in the fact that rival teams and former players are struggling too. St. Mary’s looked like a team with an outside chance to make some noise in the WCC tournament. But they lost in the quarterfinals when former Stanford PG Aaron Bright went 1-7 from the floor with no assists and 1 turnover.

Never Give Up Award: After winning a game in the NCAA tournament the last two years, Harvard just isn’t playing great basketball this year. They have talented players, but too many forwards. The spacing has never been right, and the rotation just hasn’t worked. And Harvard’s NCAA dream seemed over when the lost at home to Yale on Friday, in a relatively ugly game. But with Dartmouth upsetting Yale, Harvard gets one more chance against Yale in a one game playoff next Saturday. At this point in the year, that’s what everyone wants, just one more chance.

Questions Answered Award: The Chair of the NCAA tournament committee can’t actually answer questions, but I think he came close when in the CBS studio on Sunday. First, when asked whether Murray St. is in the tournament, he said, “All regular season champs are on our board.” Sure technically, that means they are under consideration, but that sounded like a “no” to me. Second, when asked whether there was a way to avoid a Kentucky vs Wisconsin matchup in the Elite Eight, he said, “We will follow our principles and procedures which value geography over everything.” So Kentucky vs Wisconsin in the Elite Eight remains a very strong possibility if Wisconsin doesn’t earn a 1-seed.

Day-By-Day Guide

Four Teams are In: Belmont, Coastal Carolina, Northern Iowa, and North Florida

Monday: Three NCAA Tickets will be punched on a relatively quiet night.

Tuesday Afternoon: For the first time ever, the ACC tournament starts on a Tuesday afternoon. With ESPN no longer bidding for the Big East tournament, they moved the ACC tournament back a day to put the championship on Saturday night. When you consider the hype ESPN used to put on the Big East tournament, and the hype ESPN has for the ACC in all circumstances, expect the ACC tournament to feature an extended promo-video at the start, and expect ESPN to sell the idea that winning this event is almost as prestigious as winning the NCAA tournament. And in many ways, that hype is fair. When a team as good as North Carolina is the 5th seed, you know the winner of this tournament is going to be very good. I’m normally in favor of any sporting event that takes place during a work-day, but the bottom of the ACC just isn’t very compelling this year, so no one will blame you if you skip the opening afternoon.

Tuesday Night: Four more NCAA tickets will be punched, with the WCC taking the biggest spotlight.

Wednesday Afternoon: The ACC’s second round, along with the start of the Pac-12, Big Ten, and MWC tournaments. The best game of the afternoon might be Clemson vs Florida St. The winner of that game may have the defensive ability to give Virginia a scare in the ACC quarterfinals the next day. But with two offensively challenged teams and two great defenses, you may actually prefer to work than to stay home and watch this game.

Wednesday Night: One more NCAA tournament ticket is punched (in the Patriot League.) Plus more opening round action as the bottom of the Big 12, SEC, Big East, and A10 join the conferences that were in action in the afternoon session. While most of the teams in action are bad, the win-or-go home drama will make this more compelling than it looks on paper.

Thursday Afternoon and Evening: This is the most under-rated day of college basketball on the year. Teams will be playing to hang on to 1-seeds. Teams will be playing to stay on the bubble. Teams will be playing knowing that if they lose, their season is over. Take this day off work! By 3pm there will be nine games televised nationally, with the ACC, Big12, Big East, Pac12, and MWC Quarterfinals; the Big Ten, SEC, and A10 second round; and the American Conference first round all taking place simultaneously.

Friday Afternoon: Friday afternoon is like the calm before the storm as only the Big Ten, SEC, American, and A10 Quarterfinals are taking place.

Friday Evening: This is the main event of the whole weekend. The semis in the ACC and Big 12 are almost guaranteed to be gigantic matchups between Top 20 teams. And with all nine conference tournaments taking place simultaneously, it is virtually impossible to keep track of every buzzer beater.

Saturday: Championship Saturday used to start with the CUSA title game on CBS. But a number of teams have left CUSA and CBS is no longer televises the event. (Those 9:35 local time starts were pretty brutal, so maybe this is for the best.) But let’s take a minute to remember one of the most dramatic endings that the CUSA title game ever saw. CBS will still have the Big Ten Semis and the MWC Tournament Title Game. But ESPN has the best lineup. ESPN features the SEC Semis, the Big 12 Title game, the ACC title game, and the Pac-12 title game. The ACC title game will be on Saturday for the first time since 1981. 15 total NCAA tournament tickets will be punched on Saturday. And yes, the CUSA title game will still take place, but it will be on Fox Sports 1 in the middle of the afternoon.

Sunday: The Sun Belt, SEC, and A10 finals will take place and all will have key bracket implications. Then the American Conference and Big Ten will have their final. As usual, with the late start times, there is no guarantee the committee will even factor those two finals into their analysis, but they try to build contingencies. And then the NCAA tournament bracket will be revealed.

Nitty Gritty, Key Conferences

ACC Tournament: One big piece of drama in the ACC will be whether both Virginia and Duke get 1-seeds in the NCAA tournament. As for the ACC bubble picture, Miami has some nice wins and some puzzling losses. The Hurricanes may need to knock off Notre Dame in the ACC Quarterfinals in order to make the field.

Pac-12 Tournament: Arizona is still playing for a 1-seed, but the true drama in the Pac-12 is the bubble. Some people probably want to ding Oregon for only one win against the Top 50, but UCLA and Stanford are close, and Oregon gets more credit for those wins than this table would show. UCLA and Stanford have far fewer Top 100 wins, more bad losses, and have work to do in Las Vegas.

MWC Tournament: Wyoming’s NCSOS eliminates their resume from the discussion. Here’s my key question. The committee likes to punish a team and leave it out every year for a weak NCSOS. Can they still use Wyoming as an example? Or do they need to go hunting for another victim?

Big Ten Tournament: If the committee goes hunting for a NCSOS victim in the top 6 leagues, Notre Dame clearly has the worst NCSOS. But the Fighting Irish aren’t close to having the kind of profile that you could leave out. Usually there are several teams in the 270 range that the committee can consider dinging, but not this year. In the top 6 leagues, Ohio St actually has the next worst NCSOS at 214^th. That isn’t terrible by traditional standards, but with only one win against the Top 50, Ohio St. probably shouldn’t tempt fate by losing to Minnesota/Rutgers in their opening Big Ten tournament game.

A10 Tournament: This conference tournament is always very hard to predict. Dayton seems like a lock, but if they lost to St. Bonaventure/St. Joseph’s in their first tournament game, can we be certain? It seems fairly likely that the semifinals will feature at least one, if not two teams that feel they have to win the A10 tournament to get an NCAA bid.

SEC Tournament: Georgia looks like they don’t have many quality wins, but they do have wins against Texas A&M and Mississippi. The SEC has a bunch of teams right on the cut-line for the RPI Top 50. When I pulled these numbers on Sunday night, Ole Miss and Texas A&M were just outside the Top 50 and LSU was just inside the Top 50. Something will probably change in that regard before the week is over, but either way, Georgia actually looks better in the head-to-head comparison than the table might indicate. Texas A&M must make sure they don’t lose to Mississippi St/Auburn on Thursday, but honestly none of the teams outside the Top 2 can really afford to drop games early and feel comfortable.

Big 12 Tournament: Kansas St. has some great wins, but thanks to those 5 bad losses, they have a losing record on the season. That won’t be good enough to earn any at large discussion. But it would be fun to discuss Kansas St. if they made a deep run in the Big 12 tournament. Texas certainly doesn’t want to lose to Texas Tech early in this event. Oklahoma St. has a relatively strong profile for a team with an 8-10 conference record. Those types of teams usually don’t make the field, but Oklahoma St. is definitely in position to do so. The Big 12 was very strong this year.

Big East Tournament: Right now it looks like everyone is just playing for seeding, with Villanova still hoping to earn a 1-seed in the big dance.

American Tournament: Tulsa would be wise to avoid losing to Tulane/Houston in their opening game. If Temple loses to Memphis, it wouldn’t hurt quite as much, but it would certainly make them sweat. A lot of people think UConn can make a run in this tournament because they are hosting the event.

Other		Team	NCSOS	vs 1-50		vs 51-100		BL
16	2	Northern Iowa	107	3	2	5	0	1
17	1	Wichita State	41	2	2	5	2	0
17	1	Gonzaga	15	4	2	4	0	0
13	5	BYU	Tags: NCAA Share Tweet Discuss Feedback Dan Hanner is RealGM's Senior NCAA Basketball writer. Follow @DanHanner on Twitter. How Iowa State Can Make A Final Four Run Non-National NBA Games Of The Week (Mar. 9-Mar. 15) Loading comments... More Basketball News » More Football News » More Baseball News » More Soccer News » More Hockey News »