DAYTON, OHIO — Just like that; 68 teams are now 64, and we have already vividly seen the two sides of this month. March Madness, sure. March Meanness, too.
The First Four survivors left Dayton for hither and yon — Alabama State, Mount St. Mary’s, North Carolina, Xavier — carrying an historical mission if they want to maintain one of the more striking statistical oddities of the NCAA tournament. Meanwhile, the losers went home — one of them on crutches, with his mother fighting tears in the stands as he left.
First, about the winners. For being at the bottom of the seed barrel among either the automatic qualifiers or at-large teams, First Four victors have certainly caused a lot of trouble. At least one has picked off its next opponent in 12 of the 13 tournaments since the concept was created in 2011. Five went on to the Sweet 16 and two — VCU in 2011, UCLA in 2021— didn’t stop until the Final Four. So that’s something to look for the next two days as the tournament reaches full power.
Can North Carolina do it against Ole Miss Friday?
Missed UNC’s dominant win? Here’s where you can catch up.
You’d think maybe, given the shellacking the Tar Heels applied to San Diego State. Or maybe Xavier against Illinois Friday, having trailed Texas for 30 minutes by as many as 13 points but rushing past the Longhorns 86-80 with its band of graduate student graybeards. Six of the eight Musketeers who scored against the Longhorns were grad students, ages 22, 23, 23, 23, 24 and 25. That wisdom and savvy should be dangerous weapons, but they’ll be without the partisan crowd roars of Wednesday, when they were 48 miles from their Cincinnati campus.
“Right when you think you’re going to count us out, we win,” coach Sean Miller said. “Right when you think things aren’t going to go well, we have found a way. I think that’s a great characteristic in any NCAA tournament, and we certainly have that.”
With that, the SEC fantastic 14 in the bracket are down to 13.
If neither of those two can pull it off, it will be left to No 16 seeds Alabama State or Mount St. Mary’s to summons the ghosts of UMBC and FDU. That’ll take some doing.
Two teams have dominated the top of the polls, the top of the metrics and the top of the player-of-the-year race for quite some time. Auburn and Duke. Alabama State, say hello to Auburn Thursday in Lexington, right in SEC country. Mount St. Mary’s meet Duke Friday in Raleigh, only 22 miles from Cameron Indoor Stadium.
True, anything can happen. Tony Bennett and Matt Painter, Virginia and Purdue coaches who were unwilling co-stars to history, can speak to that.
“We’re just going to have fun with this,” Alabama State coach Tony Madlock said. “We get to the dance, haven’t been to the dance at Alabama State since 2011, and we win a game first time in school history. We’re just going to enjoy this moment. Nothing is going to damper this moment for us.”
Nor for Mount St. Mary’s. “I’ve been looking forward to this since I can imagine, since I was born,” said Dola Adebayo, who scored 22 points in the 83-72 win over American Wednesday night.
“It’s basketball. It doesn’t matter how big they are, how they’re ranked. They’ve still got to tie their shoes just like me. That’s it.”
Then there’s the coach in his first season, who started his journey as a student manager at Loyola Maryland because he wasn’t good enough to play, and has worked his way to this chance. From nowhere to game planning for Duke in the NCAA tournament.
“Today when we walked out there for the national anthem, it was a little bit of a “holy cow” moment for me,” Donny Lind said Wednesday night. “Now to get to move on with this group and let them keep playing and to go down to Raleigh and play Duke is awesome. Obviously, like all of us, we’ve watched a lot of Duke basketball as kids just because they were on TV before ESPN Plus were we could watch whatever game we wanted. Certainly it is an exciting opportunity. But like the guys say, we’ve got to get ready and give them everything we’ve got.”
Lind has lost in the first round before. Of course that was 2008 in in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest qualifications. He put down 13 dogs and buns in 10 minutes, which is a small snack for champion Joey Chestnut but not bad for an economics major from Loyola. But he would have needed to gulp 20 to advance, and turned down a chance to train for a chicken wings contest.
His two bigs had quite a night against American, Adebayo with his 22 points and 22 more from Jedy Cordilia who made 10 of his 11 shots. “Those guys control a lot of the game for us,” Lind said. “They’re a safety net for our team, safety net for me.”
Friday they’ll be facing Cooper Flagg if he plays. “Just another game,” Adebayo said.
But there was another side to the First Four. Always is in March.
Matt Rogers, leading scorer for the American Eagles, was playing in his 137th college basketball game Wednesday against Mount St. Mary’s. All for the same school. He had worked a career to experience this moment, but in the first half went down not once but twice with a knee injury, the second sending him to the locker room and out for good. About 15 rows up Kristi Rogers wept as her son was helped away, saying later he had worked for this night his entire life and all she wanted was to see him able to go out on his own terms. That it had been heartbreaking to watch him go through it. She raced to the locker room to see her son at halftime and get the news he would not be back. His long American career had ended sprawled on the court.
“She’s my rock,” Matt said later of that halftime meeting. “My girlfriend was there too. It means something to have two important people be there for you in the toughest moments.”
He did not regret trying to play through the first time he went down.
“I wasn’t going to stop — I only got this chance once in my life, so I’m not going to quit by any means,” he said. “I feel like I still had a lot left in my heart for these guys because y’all don’t know what goes into this process of being a college basketball player. It’s really hard. Every day you’ve got to go to class, practice, and then repeat, repeat, and there’s so much hours that go into this,”
The injury?
“It’s just hard because I gave a lot to this sport, you hate to see your body go out like that. But I’m not done by any means, it’s just a little roadblock.”
It was time for the American Eagles to go home from a quiet locker room. Somewhere Kristi Rogers was waiting to hug her son, their tournament over. Two hours later, the big Xavier crowd stayed long after the game to happily chant as the Musketeers packed for Milwaukee.
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That’s the way it is.
