UConn earns No. 1 overall seed in NCAA Tournament: Full March Madness bracket reaction and analysis

Dan Monson rode shotgun while his wife, Darci, steered the car down I-15 through the deserts that separate Las Vegas from California. Outside his window, the barren wasteland stretched on to the horizon, offering a view to everywhere and nowhere all at once.

The irony of that view was not lost on Monson, who suddenly finds himself on a similar road. He is headed to college basketball paradise, to the first round of the NCAA Tournament. He also is no longer employed by the school he will represent once he gets there.

Long Beach State and Monson parted ways after 17 years on Monday; six days later the Beach completed an improbable three-wins-in-three-days run to capture the Big West tournament and the automatic bid that comes with it.

“I guess you could say I’m in the middle of nowhere in a lot of respects,” Monson says as he and Darci cut through Barstow, Calif., racing home to prep for the selection show party they’ll host for the players in a few hours. “I’m in a desert in my car and in my career.”

SAN DIEGO — The most important trophy the San Diego State men’s basketball program has ever won is not resting in a glass case.

Maybe one day. But for now, it’s propped on a folding table covered in a red tablecloth, in the middle of a courtyard, a few feet from an electrical cover, next to a Mexican food truck named Belinda’s Familia. So completely out in the open that you can — as many Aztecs fans are on this recent Friday night, before their team’s home tilt vs. New Mexico — smell Belinda’s mouth-watering California burritos while simultaneously touching the 2023 NCAA Tournament South Region championship trophy. The only way the program could give back to its fans any more, beyond the night’s photo opportunity, would be by subsidizing their to-go orders.

“Try to give all the fans whatever time they want, because they’re loyal,” coach Brian Dutcher says. “The city loves us. They’ve taken good care of us.”

Dutcher is in his 25th season with the Aztecs — and seventh as head coach, after succeeding Steve Fisher — and has seen the program go from 4-22 the year before he arrived to within 40 minutes of a national championship. He understands, and appreciates, that SDSU fans have been along for that same ascent.

Plus, let’s face it. When a school like San Diego State — the best non-power conference program on the West Coast, save Gonzaga … but still a Mountain West school — makes a run like last season’s Aztecs do, people don’t just forget. “It hasn’t died down yet,” says director of player development Aguek Arop, who joined SDSU’s staff this summer, immediately after his senior season ended. “Hasn’t totally sunk in yet, to be honest. Maybe in like five, seven years or something … But right now, all the memories are still fresh.” As they should be, that whole run on a mental replay: rallying past No. 1 overall seed Alabama to make the program’s first Elite Eight; Darrion Trammell’s clutch free throw vs. Creighton that sealed a Final Four berth; Lamont Butler’s game-winner vs. Florida Atlantic; and ultimately, falling short against a UConn-shaped buzzsaw. You can’t walk past five fans outside Viejas Arena before you see someone wearing Final Four apparel. As one middle-aged man waiting in line for his photo op says, it was “magical.”

Was. Past tense.

Because it was also 10 months ago, with a different roster. Even with seven returners back, last year’s success has no impact on the Aztecs — who, at 24-10, have lost more games than they did last season. San Diego State was a top-16 seed in the selection committee’s early bracket reveal last month, but it enters Selection Sunday as a projected No. 5 seed.

It’s a tough line to straddle: appreciating what happened, without letting it become an anchor in the present. Dutcher can easily control that dichotomy inside his locker room, but outside it? Results bear expectations. And the Aztecs achieved, so now they must carry that mantle — the weight of playing underneath a black NATIONAL FINALIST banner night in and night out. Their geography only exacerbates the issue. San Diego is … uh, eager for winners, to put it gently. America’s eighth-largest city somehow only has one pro franchise in the country’s top four leagues (Major League Baseball’s Padres) … and more NFL teams who have relocated (one) than overall professional championships (zero). “I like to say we’re the other pro team in San Diego,” Dutcher says.

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Duquesne defeated VCU 57-51 in the Atlantic 10 championship Sunday, securing an NCAA Tournament bid for the first time in 46 years.

Duquesne finished off their conference tournament run thanks to a team-high 10 points from guard Dae Dae Grant, who led the team in scoring with 16.9 points per game this season.

While the Dukes struggled offensively — shooting 29.8 percent from the field and 8-of-25 from 3 — they out-rebounded the Rams 42 to 34 and forced 16 turnovers in the title game.

Duquesne finished sixth in the A10 this season and wasn’t expected to be a big factor in Atlantic City. Its coach, Keith Dambrot, considered retiring last summer to take care of his wife, Donna, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Dambrot joined the program in 2017 and made it respectable almost immediately, but breaking through to true NCAA Tournament contention proved tough.

Now, Dambrot and the Dukes are going dancing.

Florida coach Todd Golden says Micah Handlogten will have surgery later this evening on his fractured lower left leg.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Bruce Pearl now has two of the three SEC Tournament championships in Auburn men’s basketball history, and he has a team that is good enough to double the Tigers’ Final Four total.

Auburn (27-7) ran away from Florida in the SEC tourney title game at Bridgestone Arena, 86-67, in a game that featured impressive fight from the Gators (24-11) after losing starting big man Micah Handlogten to a leg fracture early in the game.

But Florida had little chance in its fourth game in four days, against an Auburn team that plays 10 players almost equally and had no one with more than 24 minutes Sunday.

Those 24 minutes belonged to Auburn big man Johni Broome, who capped a dominant weekend in Nashville with 19 points and 11 rebounds. The Tigers had nine players with six points or more and were terrific in both man and zone against the Gators, who got 15 from Zyon Pullin.

Auburn’s last SEC title of any kind before Pearl arrived was in 1999. Under Pearl, the Tigers now have two SEC tourney titles and two regular-season titles, all in the past seven years. The 2019 SEC Tournament championship in Nashville vaulted the Tigers to a Final Four run, and this team certainly has the ingredients to follow suit.

Vermont captured its third consecutive America East title with a 66-61 win over UMass Lowell on Saturday. Get to know the Catamounts:

Location: Burlington, Vt.

Record: 28-6, 15-1 America East

Coach: John Becker (13th season, 308-119 overall)

Leading scorer: TJ Long (12.2 points per game)

Last NCAA Tournament appearance: 2023

NCAA Tournament record: 2-9

Projected seed/matchup: No. 14 (vs. No. 3 Baylor in Memphis, Tenn.)

Auburn hadn't won any SEC title of any kind since 1999.

Now the Tigers have won either the regular season or tournament title four times in seven years:

• 2018 regular season
• 2019 tournament
• 2022 regular season
• 2024 tournament

Auburn up 20 on Florida with 2 minutes to go.

Bruce Pearl's team won a game by single digits for the first time all season yesterday. Win No. 27 today will be the Tigers' 26th by double digits.

The Big Ten tournament final always abuts the NCAA Tournament selection show in a way that more or less undermines the resonance of the game result. It is, of course, a big deal to the teams on the floor. And it is, of course, irrelevant to people at home who just want to fill a bracket and make picks.

When Illinois and Wisconsin face off at the Target Center in Minneapolis on Sunday, the stakes aren’t going to change that dynamic.

Both are safely in the NCAA Tournament. Beyond safe, even. If anything, they’ll be battling over semantics. Maybe Illinois can firm up a spot as a 3-seed and ensure favorable geographic placement. Maybe Wisconsin can inch up to a 5-seed and create a slightly more manageable second-round matchup.

Or maybe the selection committee has enough to deal with and is fine keeping both teams right where they are, regardless of outcome.

Momentum, one supposes, can’t be ignored. Illinois hasn’t reached the Sweet 16 since 2013 and has flamed out in the NCAA Tournament recently despite having NBA-caliber talent. A Big Ten tournament title could provide some confidence and reassurance.

Should Wisconsin win, it effectively buries its late-season slump and reinforces the idea within the locker room that this is a much different team, and that Greg Gard is a plenty good enough coach to figure stuff out.

One of the biggest rule changes to hit college basketball happened last June. And it might change the way you watch this year’s March Madness.

This season is on pace to be the most efficient offensive season in men’s Division I history, mostly because of how the block/charge foul is being officiated. Last summer, the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Committee altered the interpretation of what a charge is. A help-side defender used to be required to be set before an offensive player went airborne; now, he must be set by the time the offensive player’s plant foot hits the floor.

That’s the technical definition. In practical terms? “Kids aren’t just jumping in front of each other,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl says. “It has increased the offenses.”

This was the plan. In October, Big 12 director of officials Curtis Shaw said that he’d reviewed 100 called charges from the previous season — and that 96 of those would now be called blocks. “It’s almost impossible to take a legal charge anymore,” Shaw said then.

That prediction has held. Charges are not a statistic that is tracked in college basketball, but the analytics website KenPom.com tracks non-steal turnovers. This includes stepping or throwing the ball out of bounds, traveling, illegal screens or a charge. Last season the average percentage of possessions that ended in a non-steal turnover was 8.9 percent. This season, that’s down to 7.8 percent, the lowest rate it has been in the 25 years that the website has tracked play-by-play data. Turnovers are also at a record low.

That has led to scoring going up. College basketball teams are scoring 106.4 points per 100 possessions, compared to 104.8 last season.

“This year will be the highest (scoring) since I’ve been tracking and really the highest ever, because we know that shooting was pretty terrible back in the ’70s and ’80s and before that,” says Ken Pomeroy, the creator of KenPom.com. “And I think there’s a direct line from the charge rule to that.”

And that means when the men’s NCAA Tournament tips off this week, the game will be as entertaining and watchable as ever.

“Most coaches are really thrilled with the rule from the standpoint of the game is a lot freer, a lot more open,” Baylor coach Scott Drew says. “Fewer collisions, less risk of guys getting injured when when you used to have games where there were five-to-10 charges being attempted; that’s a lot of collisions. It’s a lot more like the NBA game, which I know people enjoy.”

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Ten guys with a dozen-plus minutes already. Nine guys have scored. Eight have four-plus points.

Florida keeps fighting back, but the Tigers always answer. It's 60-48 with 11:18 to go in the SEC title game.

My goodness, this block.

Dylan Cardwell denies Thomas Haugh for one of his three blocks on the afternoon.

Stetson is headed to its first NCAA Tournament after defeating Austin Peay 94-91 in the Atlantic Sun championship game on March 10.

Location: Deland, Fla.

Record: 22-12, 11-5 Atlantic Sun

Coach: Donnie Jones (fifth season, 78-77 overall)

Leading scorer: Jalen Blackmon (21.5 points per game)

Last NCAA Tournament appearance: N/A

Projected seed/matchup: No. 16 (vs. No. 16 Grambling in First Four in Dayton, Ohio)

Yale came into this season having gone to three of the past six tournaments in which the Ivy League participated — the league sat out the 2021 tournament because of COVID-19 — and beat Baylor in the 2016 first round.

Yet coach James Jones told me in the preseason, "“This is my most talented team from top to bottom.”

Things haven't gone as easily as Jones might have predicted; the Bulldogs took a backseat to Princeton in attention and rankings for most of the year, they started just 7-6 and lost to Brown at home in overtime on the regular season's final day to miss out on a share of the conference title.

And then Yale looked to be cooked late against Brown in the Ivy title game on Sunday.

But ... talent prevails. Matt Knowling, Bez Mbeng and John Poulakidas all made key plays down the stretch. Yale has the rare Ivy luxury of a talented 7-footer in Danny Wolf, whom Jones, in a bit of breathless preseason hyperbole, compared to a young Nikola Jokić.

Ivy teams have been a tough out in recent NCAA Tournaments — witness Princeton's Sweet 16 run last year — and Yale certainly has the roster to make some noise next week.