Some great student-athletes will miss March Madness due to the Selection Committee or in other cases from unkind rims to sex and recruiting scandals to a questionable accusation of an assault.
Two potential Sweet 16 teams are watching from home due to probation.
10. Louisville and SMU – Another person stepped forward in the Louisville scandal involving the accusation of prostitutes hired to convince recruits to sign. Meanwhile SMU continued Larry Brown’s record of bringing winning basketball and sanctions to every college who has hired him (see Sporting News).
9. Yale’s Jack Montague could ultimately be off this list if he was guilty of sexual misconduct, but he could also be the player most cheated if his case plays out like the Duke Lacrosse scandal, in which the prosecutor was the only one who went to jail once details were revealed. Yale is going to their first tournament since 1962, but as Breitbart Sports previously noted:
The Yale Daily News now confirms what campus observers long suspected: that the school expelled Jack Montague for sexual misconduct. February’s punishment stems from an allegation of sexual assault brought in November. The student paper also noted that the school’s provost refused to hear an appeal, that the school requires the disciplinary matter to remain a secret hidden from public scrutiny, and that no local law enforcement agency pursues charges against the player.
“Those that were close to the situation are frustrated with our school, because we witnessed how the UWC [University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct] policies go against established law and strip an accused student of due process and any form of proper defense one might receive in a real court,” Montague’s classmate and friend Blake Thompson told the Daily News.
8. Evansville – All-American Egidijus Mockevicius watched as the cruel rim somehow redirected a Northern Iowa buzzer beater through the hoop in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament.
7. Oakland – All-American Kay Felder scored 30 points against two national contenders, Michigan State and Virginia, and cut between a virtual triple-team only to have his shot scrape off the rim in the Horizon Semifinals.
6. Virginia Tech – Buzz Williams rolled through the end of the ACC season and showed the kind of end of season form that he used to lead Marquette to three straight Sweet 16s. Look out in the NIT and next year’s NCAA.
5. Valparaiso – Not only a great team, but a team that finished strong by winning 10 of their last 12 games, and would have finished 12-0 except for one two-point loss and another in overtime to Green Bay in the Horizon League Championship.
4. San Diego St. – The East Coast bias was most evident in the fact that the three best teams left out were all from out west. The following would have all had a very good chance at an opening round win – and are all actually better teams than our No. 1 choice.
3. BYU – see San Diego State.
2. Saint Mary’s – see San Diego State.
1. Monmouth – In addition to the entertainment value of the hilarious sideline performances, this team addressed the issue the NCAA always uses against teams from small conferences, “They did not beat enough big teams away from home.” This works well because major conference teams play so many highly ranked teams that they always beat a few of them. But Monmouth went out of their way in scheduling, and beat UCLA, Notre Dame, USC, and Georgetown away from home.
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