Yearly presently, I ship out my “March Insanity and Unhappy Water” put up. Again after I was teaching school basketball, the lads’s March Insanity was a particular time. I attended eight consecutive Remaining Fours, and every was memorable. Despite the fact that I used to be teaching on the Division III stage, I used to be very aware of the highest groups and the highest gamers. Together with trying ahead to the Remaining 4 weekend in no matter metropolis was internet hosting that 12 months, we additionally appeared ahead to seeing how the gamers all of us knew nicely would carry out on what was the largest stage that they had ever been on of their careers.
For some cause, this season’s March Insanity on the lads’s facet doesn’t have that very same attract. Truly, I do know the explanation: the most effective males’s collegiate gamers go to the NBA after one or two seasons, and we don’t get to know them almost in addition to years previous. Additionally, lots of the prime picks come from overseas and don’t take part within the NCAA event — to select a reputation at random, Victor Wembanyama.
As a substitute, this 12 months’s shining collegiate basketball star, the one participant everybody is aware of, is Caitlin Clark, the wondrous guard enjoying for Iowa. She simply broke all of the Division I scoring information — women and men — and is way and away essentially the most well-known participant in school hoops this 12 months.
And it doesn’t finish with Caitlin. The second most well-known school basketball participant this season could also be Angel Reese, the star ahead enjoying for defending champion LSU. In final season’s championship sport, her Tigers beat Caitlin Clark’s Iowa workforce.
Right here in Los Angeles, we have now a 3rd ladies star who additionally could also be extra well-known than any males’s participant: USC’s first-year participant JuJu Watkins (I simply discovered first 12 months college students aren’t referred to as “freshmen” any extra). Watkins is actually nice, and will turn out to be extra well-known than anybody in both the lads’s or ladies’s sport earlier than she graduates.
Probably the most well-known males’s participant this 12 months? In all probability Zach Edey of Purdue. Yawn. Or Bronny James, who’s averaged 5 factors, 3 boards and a couple of assists per sport. USC, the workforce Bronny performs for, won’t be within the tourney. In his closing sport, a 70-49 loss to Arizona, he scored 3 factors, bought one rebound and had no assists in 22 minutes, so it’s most likely higher we don’t should see that within the event. With none true stars, this 12 months’s males’s March Insanity could also be just like the Oscars in these years when movies like Nomadland or Moonlight win for Finest Image, although few individuals really noticed the movie.
However the ladies’s March Insanity could also be extra just like the 2024 Oscars with blockbusters similar to Barbie and Oppenheimer vying for the highest prize. However as a substitute of well-known actors, administrators and films, will probably be Clark, Reese and Watkins and their groups competing for the massive awards, whereas having to beat different sturdy groups similar to South Carolina, Stanford, Texas and UCLA. With March being Ladies’s Historical past Month, it is just acceptable that we acknowledge that the NCAA ladies’s March Insanity has extra compelling storylines in 2024 than the lads’s.
This basketball season, my March Insanity and Unhappy Water put up must be in regards to the 132 groups competing within the males’s and ladies’s tournaments, not simply the 68 within the males’s. As a result of at the least for 2024, the celebs are within the ladies’s Insanity. And talking of nice movies, Unhappy Water may very well be how the Fremen in Dune describe tears.
