SI:AM | Breaking Down the Men’s and Women’s March Madness Brackets
Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Yesterday was a hell of a day, wasn’t it?
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First things first
Before we move on to what was our scheduled programming, it’d be silly not to address the Tom Brady shocker. He’s coming out of retirement and, perhaps more surprisingly, returning to the Buccaneers.
Speculation about Brady’s return began basically the moment he announced he was retiring, so it’s not a complete surprise that he would change his mind. (It’s even less surprising in retrospect once you see Brady’s reaction to Cristiano Ronaldo asking him after Saturday’s Manchester United game if he was finished.) But to change his mind after just 40 days? That’s the real shock—or maybe not.
As Albert Breer writes, everything the Bucs did so far this offseason indicated this was a possibility. They didn’t strip down the roster for a rebuild and even created cap space earlier in the weekend by restructuring Vita Vea’s contract.
“And Brady’s timing isn’t a mistake, either. Monday at noon, free agents will start to enter into agreements with outside teams, and the Buccaneers have a boatload of them (12 of The MMQB’s top 221). So if he was going to return to Tampa, doing it now would give the Bucs the best chance to sell as many of their free agents as possible—Carlton Davis, Ryan Jensen, Alex Cappa, Ndamukong Suh, Jason Pierre-Paul, Leonard Fournette and Rob Gronkowski among them—on doing the same.”
Getting a free agent to agree to play for a team led by a 45-year-old quarterback would usually be a tough task, but this is Tom Brady we’re talking about.
The stage is set for the wildest three weeks in sports
After a thrilling week of conference tournaments, it’s finally time for March Madness to officially begin.
The big news of Selection Sunday on the men’s side was Richmond winning the Atlantic 10 tournament final over Davidson. Because the Wildcats had assembled a strong enough résumé to earn an at-large bid, the Spiders’ win knocked a team off the bubble. The selection committee said if Davidson had won, the last at-large spot would have gone to another A-10 team, Dayton. (You can see the whole bracket here.)
Your No. 1 seeds are Gonzaga, Arizona, Baylor and Kansas. Duke, despite Coach K’s reported request to be placed in the Midwest region so he could hopefully coach in his hometown of Chicago, is the No. 2 seed in the West. (A more fitting end to his career would be for the Blue Devils to crash out in the second round like they’ve done so many times before.)
You can see all of SI’s experts’ brackets here if you want to figure out which early-round upsets you should be picking (Loyola Chicago and Virginia Tech are trendy picks). But if you’re looking for an outside-the-box Final Four choice, take a long look at Iowa. The Hawkeyes, fresh off winning the Big Ten tournament, are the No. 5 seed in the Midwest and three of our analysts think their high-powered offense could propel them to the Final Four in New Orleans. As for who will win the whole thing, most of our experts like Gonzaga.
The women’s bracket, which had traditionally been revealed Monday, was also announced last night. This is the first women’s tournament to feature 68 teams and the first one to use the March Madness branding, after the uproar last year over disparities between the men’s and women’s tournaments.
South Carolina, Stanford, NC State and Louisville claimed the No. 1 seeds. Kentucky, which I wrote about last week after the Wildcats upset the Gamecocks to win the SEC tournament, secured a No. 6 seed.
Instead of a deep underdog run, though, Kentucky could very well fall victim to another Cinderella. It faces No. 11 seed Princeton in the first round in the Bridgeport region and, as Ben Pickman points out, the Tigers have a strong résumé as a potential bracket buster. They’ve won 17 straight and boast one of the best defenses in the country. (Pickman also likes No. 7 seed UCF and No. 12 seed Stephen F. Austin as upset picks.)
Despite the loss to Kentucky in the conference tournament, the national title is still South Carolina’s to lose. Pickman likes the Gamecocks to cut down the nets, but as we all know, anything can happen in March.
SI’s Morning Madness newsletter is back. Our free, daily NCAA tournament newsletter has everything you need to stay up-to-date and give you an edge when filling out your brackets. Sign up for free at SI.com/newsletters and read today’s edition here.
The best of Sports Illustrated
If you need even more NCAA picks, today’s Daily Cover features 10 potential Cinderella teams that Kevin Sweeney likes to make noise this month.
Albert Breer’s MMQB column leads with an inside look at what we all thought was going to be the biggest quarterback news of the week: how the Broncos and Seahawks pulled off the Russell Wilson trade. … We know Brady is playing at least one more season, but Conor Orr asks: How many more he has in him?. … Stephanie Apstein checks in from Mets camp, where the so-called “Steve Cohen tax” is a hot topic of conversation.
Around the Sports World
In other quarterback news, the Vikings freed up cap space by extending Kirk Cousins. … LeBron James became the first player to record 30,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 10,000 assists in his career. … Kyrie Irving had to buy a ticket to watch the Nets game yesterday. … The Yankees and Twins pulled off a trade that sends Gary Sánchez and Gio Urshela to Minnesota in exchange for Josh Donaldson and two other players. … WWE Hall of Famer Scott Hall is on life support after experiencing complications from hip surgery.
The top 5...
… things I saw yesterday:
5. The Grizzlies and Thunder both showed up in white uniforms, leading their game to be delayed.
4. Jaxson Hayes throws down a between-the-legs dunk on a fast break.
3. Kevin Durant hits a shot over Evan Fournier and calls him “too small” in his native language (trop petit).
2. The rest of KD’s 53-point day (a season high).
1. Jaylen Brown dunks all over Maxi Kleber and high-fives Kevin Garnett before getting back on defense.
SIQ
I’ll admit this is a weird one, but I found a bunch of interesting information that I’ll share when I give the answer tomorrow. Prince Albert II of Monaco was born on this day in 1958. Before taking the throne in 2005, he competed in five Olympic Games in which sport?
- Archery
- Dressage
- Bobsled
- Fencing
Check tomorrow’s newsletter for the answer.
Friday’s SIQ: When the NFL brought back replay review in 1999, how did coaches tell the ref when they wanted to challenge a call?
Answer: by using a pager. Under the 1986–92 replay policy, reviews could only be initiated from the replay official in the booth. The revised system allowed coaches to challenge calls on the field, and the league landed on a very ’99 (and very NFL) solution for how coaches would notify the referee that they wanted to challenge: by buzzing a Motorola pager. Leave it to the NFL to change a rule and also get a sponsorship out of it.
The pager idea was in response to one of the primary complaints about the previous replay system—that the process was taking too long. The bigger issue with the NFL’s initial replay effort was that only a small fraction of calls were overturned. Over the course of six seasons, officials reviewed 2,967 plays (2.2 per game) and reversed only 12.6% of them. Since replay returned in 1999, 40% of challenges have been successful, with the success rate climbing to 57% last season.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the pager didn’t last as the preferred challenge signaling device. According to the Los Angeles Times, Rams coach Dick Vermeil kept hitting his by accident during a preseason trial run of the replay system. Vermeil “triggered his pager four times in the first half alone. Referee Dick Hantak almost charged the Rams with a timeout until he discovered that Vermeil set the device off every time he bent forward.”
Sometimes, a low-tech solution is the best one. You don’t have to worry as much about coaches accidentally throwing a red flag on the field.
From the Vault: March 14, 1994
This is one of the most famous (or infamous) Sports Illustrated covers ever.
In 1994, when Michael Jordan was trying to transition to baseball, SI sent writer Steve Wulf to Sarasota to see the circus firsthand. To say Wulf’s story was unflattering would be a monumental understatement. The “Bag it, Michael!” headline on the cover is the one that people remember the most, but the headline on the story (“Err Jordan”) isn’t any kinder.
Wulf spends almost 2,000 words laying out why Jordan isn’t cut out for the big leagues and why lots of people in baseball think he’s making a mockery of the game. Wulf’s story is harsh, no doubt, but it isn’t unfair. Sure, he makes a few snide remarks about MJ (like saying the “most impressive thing Jordan has done on a baseball field” was make five out of seven shots when shooting baseballs into a bucket after a drill), but he also credits Jordan for his serious work ethic. Wulf saves the harshest criticism for the White Sox:
“To hear the crowd cheer every step that number 45 takes on a baseball field or to watch the fans walk around in their Air Jordan apparel purchased from the special Nike van at Ed Smith Stadium is to instantly understand why the White Sox are letting Jordan do this. So shame on them for their cynical manipulation of the public. And shame on them for feeding Michael’s matchbook-cover delusion—BECOME A MAJOR LEAGUER IN JUST SIX WEEKS!”
The criticism of Jordan mostly comes from other ballplayers—some of them on the record, some of them not—whose reactions to MJ’s baseball folly range from unimpressed to downright outraged.
Jordan was, predictably, not pleased with the cover and the article. As a result, he hasn’t agreed to a one-on-one interview with SI since.
“I wasn’t interviewed for that,” Jordan said in the documentary The Last Dance. “They came out to critique me without understanding what my passion was at the time.”
Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.
