MVN - Most Valuable Network

Welcome, NCAA Tournament Newcomers

61 of the 65 teams in the NCAA tournament have been to the Big Dance before…and while there are certainly plenty of compelling stories among the squads who are making a return appearance in the tournament, I always like to focus on the teams who have earned their first bid in school history to the tourney. Here are the four squads making their debut in the Big Dance this year: UMBC (University of Maryland-Baltimore County), Portland State, American University, and Texas-Arlington.

UMBC has perhaps the worst nickname of any team in the tournament: The Retrievers (naming your school after a favorite dog breed isn’t exactly the best way to strike fear into the hearts of your opponents). And the non-abbreviated name of the school, Maryland-Baltimore County, makes it sound like a Division III school (a small community college, perhaps) — not a Division I school that has the opportunity to play on college basketball’s biggest stage.

Anyways, the Retrievers are the 15th seed in the Midwest region, and will face Georgetown on Friday afternoon. God’s speed, UMBC.

The Portland State Vikings, meanwhile, are the 16th seed in the Midwest, and will make a quick exit from the Big Dance when they play Kansas on Thursday afternoon. My problem with PSU? Well, why would someone name a school “Portland State” considering the minor detail that PORTLAND ISN’T AN EFFING STATE? Bizarre school name aside, PSU takes a solid winning streak into the tournament, as they won their final 14 conference games of the season.

Moving along, the American University Eagles are slotted as the 15th seed in the East region, and will take on Bruce Pearl’s Tennessee Volunteers on Friday. Besides being an extraordinarily patriotic school, American University is one of the best three-point shooting teams in college basketball — they rank third in Division I with a 40.9% shooting percentage from beyond the arc. If they can bring a large group of fans to hold up pictures of Erin Andrews during the game and thus distract Pearl, they might have a shot in their opening round match.

And finally, we have the Texas-Arlington Mavericks, who are the 16th seed in the South region and will face Memphis on Friday night. Although I’m not wild about them sharing a nickname with another Dallas basketball team, UTA is an easy team to root for — throughout the past 10 years, they’ve only won an average of 13.5 games per season, so this appearance in the NCAA tournament is their first taste of success in quite some time. Let’s hope they enjoy it, as their debut bid in the Big Dance will last for approximately two hours on Friday.

So there you have it…the four teams making their debuts in the Big Dance. Although all of these squads should be quite proud of making history at their respective schools, I’d advise them to not get very comfortable…their postseason bids will all be short-lived.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 4:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.