The madness before the madness is upon us.
With first round action kicking off in the ACC and Big 12 tournaments on Tuesday, the madness of Championship Week is on the verge of enveloping all of us.
Here are four things that could make this week even madder than most.
1. A Power Conference Bid Thief
When you hear the term “bid thief” this time of year, you typically think of a conference like the Atlantic 10 or the Missouri Valley; Ones where there is a team or two that are locks to make the NCAA tournament, and then everyone else is fighting to “steal” a bid from one of the at-large teams on the bubble.
But the big boys can steal bids too.
Multiple conference tournament winners from the old Pac-12 (RIP) were teams that were comfortably on the outside looking in at the field of 68 when Championship Week began. The Georgetown Hoyas won the 2021 Big East tournament despite beginning the week with a losing overall record. Just last year, NC State made an unbelievable five wins in five days run to claim the ACC tournament title and knock Oklahoma out of the Big Dance.
So keep an eye out for someone getting hot in one of the power five tournaments this week and screwing everything up for a team that has been living on the edge for the last month. Actually, we can probably just call it the power four for this week, because unless LSU or South Carolina win the SEC tournament, we’re almost certainly talking about a tournament champion that was already dancing.
The most likely power conference to produce a bid thief? It has to be the ACC.
Sure, Duke is incredible and has dominated the conference at a level rarely seen, but the ACC has not had a No. 1 seed win its postseason tournament since all the way back in 2018. If the Blue Devils get knocked off at some point this week in Charlotte, and anyone besides Louisville or Clemson cuts down the nets, the league’s auto-bid representative is once again going to be a team earns a double-digit seed in the dance.
2. Auburn Could Lose the No. 1 Overall Seed
Thanks in large part to the otherworldly strength of this year’s SEC, Auburn has put together a historic NCAA tournament resume this season.
The Tigers have a whopping 16 Quadrant-I victories, easily the most of any team in the country, and the most of any team since the NCAA went to the quadrant system. They are a combined 11-0 in games outside of Quadrant-I, they played the toughest schedule in America according to every metric, and they locked up an outright championship in the toughest league in the sport before the final week of the regular season even started.
Understandably, there are plenty of people who made the claim that Auburn had locked up the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament before the calendar even flipped to March.
They may have spoken too soon.
As good as the Tigers have been, most advanced metrics utilized by the NCAA tournament Selection Committee believe Duke, at the moment, is better. The Blue Devils are No. 1 in the NET, No. 1 on KenPom, No. 1 in the BPI, and No. 1 on T-Rank. Duke has also lost just one time since last November, while Auburn dropped both of its final two regular season games.
Oh yeah, and Duke beat Auburn head-to-head.
Despite one of the strongest overall NCAA tournament resumes that we’ve seen in recent memory, if Auburn loses early in the SEC tournament and Duke takes care of business in Charlotte, there’s a very real chance that the Tigers could be relegated to No. 2 overall seed status on Selection Sunday.
3. St. John’s Gets Very Angry or St. John’s Makes Everyone Else Very Angry
Without question, one of the best stories of the 2024-25 college basketball season has been Rick Pitino and the St. John’s Red Storm. The Hall of Fame head coach has injected life into the long dormant program from New York, leading the Johnnies to their first outright Big East regular season title in 40 years.
St. John’s is 27-4 overall and will begin this week’s Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden as the 1-seed and clear favorite to win their first league tournament title since 2000.
Let’s take Pitino and all the hubbub about St. John’s being back out of the equation for a moment. If you said that any team with any head coach had the potential to go into Selection Sunday as a dual Big East champion and with a 30-4 overall record, you would just assume that team was in the running for a No. 1 seed. At the very least, you would assume that team had locked up one of the top No. 2 seeds.
This may not be the case with St. John’s.
As stellar as the Red Storm’s overall record may be and as sparkling as their No. 5 (coaches poll) and No. 6 (AP poll) national rankings are, they don’t have the depth on their tournament resume that a lot the teams that they’re jockeying for position with do.
St. John’s currently sits at No. 16 in the NET Rankings and has just four Quadrant-I wins. That’s the fewest of any team in the top 20 outside of Gonzaga, which plays in the West Coast Conference and is projected at the moment to be a No. 8 seed.
If St. John’s wins the Big East tournament and earns a No. 2 seed, the Committee will have to justify it by invoking the infamous “eye test.” That will upset a handful of teams with more quality wins and better computer numbers. On the flip side, if St. John’s wins 30 games before Selection Sunday and wins both Big East championships and doesn’t earn a top two seed for March Madness, Pitino might stage a one man riot in the middle of Times Square.
Both options are fun if you don’t have any skin in the game.
4. Delaware Could Join an Elite Group
There are just two teams in the history of Division-I college basketball that have made the NCAA tournament by virtue of winning five games in five days to capture their conference tournament title.
The first was UConn in 2011. Led by the unbelievable play of star guard Kemba Walker, the ninth-seeded Huskies made history with an incredible run that included a buzzer-beating win over top-seed Pitt in the quarterfinals, an overtime win over Syracuse in the semis, and a three-point win over Louisville to win it all. Walker and company then carried that success into the Big Dance, where they made a surprise run to claim the program’s third national championship.
Unlike UConn, last year’s NC State team had no chance of making the NCAA tournament if it did’t pull off a miracle run in its conference tournament. That’s exactly what the Wolfpack did, winning five games in five days, a run highlighted by stunning upsets of in-state rivals Duke and North Carolina, as well as a thrilling overtime win over Virginia. The magic continued deeper into March as the Pack piled on four more victories, punctuated by another upset of Duke to send the program to its first Final Four since 1983.
Championship Week is young, but we already have a team on the verge of joining UConn and NC State in the five-timers club. If they can get the job done and then match the success the Huskies and Wolfpack had in the Big Dance, well, it’s safe to say it would be the biggest March Madness story of all-time.
Delaware went into last Friday having lost six straight games to end its regular season, and 11 of its last 12. The Blue Hens (Blue Hens!) were ranked 267th on Ken Pom, were the 12th seed out of 14 teams in Coastal Athletic Association tournament, and were an extremely safe bet to not make it out of the weekend.
Then, March happened.
The Blue Hens (Blue Hens!) found their touch from the outside and squeaked out a first round win over 13th-seeded Stony Brook. Then they really found their touch from the outside. Delaware blasted 5th-seeded Campbell by 17, hung 100 points in a 22-point upset of fourth-seeded William & Mary, and then toppled top-seed Towson by 10. Now the only thing standing between the Hens and the NCAA tournnament is a Tuesday night tilt with second-seeded UNC Wilmington.
The last time Delaware won five consecutive games over D-I opponents? December of 2023. Now, they’re one win away from doing it in single five-game stretch on the biggest stage their conference has to offer.
No one is saying pencil Delaware into your Final Four if they’re able to get past Wilmington, but maybe bank on them advancing out of the First Four in Dayton.
