The soul of college basketball – and the madness of March – is alive and well in the mid-majors

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Delaware guard Niels Lane shoots over UNC Wilmington guard Greedy Williams (7) in the first half of the Coastal Athletic Association championship on March 11. – Terrance Williams/AP

The NCAA tournament might be college basketball’s most high-profile showcase of the desperate, win-or-go-home style of basketball that makes March one of the most special times of the year.

But before those games, before millions of people fill out their brackets and start putting their faith in schools they’ve never heard of, potential Cinderella stories battle for their basketball lives.

In front of loud crowds in small gyms, the madness is already spreading – and the soul of college basketball is wonderfully, mercifully, alive.

Take, for instance, the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) tournament, contested over the last few days in Washington, DC’s CareFirst Arena – the 4,200-seat arena in southeast Washington that is sort of the little cousin to Capital One Arena in Chinatown where the NBA’s Wizards and NHL’s Capitals play.

The CAA is expected to send just one men’s team to The Big Dance that tips off next week, the champion of the conference tournament that earns an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. That means after all these games, after all these months of ball, a tournament berth came down to how a team played on one long weekend in the nation’s capital.

What that led to is some of the most frenzied basketball in the college game, the kind of hoops that can only come from players who aren’t sure they’ll ever get to dribble a ball competitively ever again if they lose.

Each foul is so hard it makes you cringe. Every loose ball is met by three or four bodies spilling onto the hardwood to try and capture it. The big fear about college sports these days is that the amount of money pouring into major conference sports is going to rob the game of the passion that makes it special, especially at these smaller schools. There are concerns that the best players from these…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/soul-college-basketball-madness-march-104920687.html

Author : CNN Sports

Publish date : 2025-03-12 10:49:00

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