Does defense really win championships? Well, we’re about to find out in the 2023 men’s NCAA Tournament, which tips off its round of 64 on Thursday afternoon. The top four seeds in the tournament — Houston, Alabama, Kansas and Purdue — all have a reputation for making their opponents look like they’re violating James Naismith’s […]
There are plenty of folks in Lawrence, Kansas — and even a pundit or two — who believe the cancellation of the 2020 men’s NCAA Tournament due to the COVID-19 pandemic cost the Jayhawks a championship. Today, coach Bill Self still feels that the unit was “the best team in the country.” Twenty-four months later, […]
March Madness is back, and this year’s tournament of buzzer beaters and bracket busters is set up to be even more chaotic than usual. Unlike last season, when the consensus best teams in men’s basketball met in the national final, the 2021-22 season didn’t feature twin juggernauts. Gonzaga held top billing for nearly half the […]
The biannual regular-season showdown between Duke and North Carolina is typically appointment television for men’s college basketball fans. Not so much this year, with the bitter rivals meeting unranked for the first time since 1960. The Feb. 6 matchup posted the lowest TV rating and audience for the series in at least 14 years. Unexpected […]
Though there are no actual games to be played, FiveThirtyEight is still taking a shot at a little March Madness. We built an NCAA Tournament bracket, using ESPN’s Bracketology, and we’re simulating the results of each game by using a simple “100-sided dice roll” against our forecast probabilities. We’ve played out our first and second […]