Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m so excited for another week of conference tournament action.
In today’s SI:AM:
🎟️ Tickets punched
📝 NFL free agency primer
🇲🇽 Canelo’s impact on music
Fourteen down, 122 to go
Six days before Selection Sunday, the NCAA tournament fields are starting to take shape. More tickets will be punched in the coming days as conference tournaments build to a crescendo, but 14 men’s and women’s teams have already locked up a spot in the bracket. Let’s take a quick look at each of them.
Men
Lipscomb Bisons (ASUN)
Lipscomb is in the NCAA tournament for the second time in program history and the first time since 2018. The Bisons shared the ASUN regular season title with the North Alabama Lions and beat them in the conference tournament final on Sunday to punch their ticket to the big dance.
Lipscomb is led by Jacob Ognacevic, a 6' 8" forward who led the conference with 20.3 points per game and ranked third with 8.1 rebounds per game. It’s a great comeback story after a bone bruise in his knee sidelined Ognacevic for all of last season.
The Bisons don’t have much in terms of quality wins (their best non-conference victory is a road win over the Chattanooga Mocs) but they’re a well-rounded team, ranking in the top 50 nationally in both offensive and defensive efficiency.
High Point Panthers (Big South)
High Point is going dancing for the first time after beating the Winthrop Eagles in a thrilling Big South title game. The Panthers trailed by 15 with 15 minutes left to play but stormed back to claim the championship with an 81–69 win.
"AND HIGH POINT REACHES NEW HEIGHTS! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THEIR DIVISION ONE HISTORY, THE PANTHERS WILL PLAY IN THE NCAA TOURNAMENT!"
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 9, 2025
Matt Schick with the ESPN2 call as High Point erases a 15-point deficit to beat Winthrop in the Big South Championship. 🏀🏆🕺🎙️#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/ov3qFppds2
The Panthers are in the midst of their best season in school history, with a record of 28–5. They boast a couple of respectable wins over AAC teams (the North Texas Mean Green and UAB Blazers) and have one of the best offenses in the nation, ranking fourth with a blistering 122.0 points per 100 possessions.
Drake Bulldogs (Missouri Valley)
The Bulldogs are back in the NCAA tournament for the third year in a row and fourth time in five years, but that fact obscures just how much things have changed for Drake this season.
Drake’s previous coach Darian DeVries left after last season, taking the team’s star player, his son, Tucker, with him to West Virginia. To replace him, Drake hired Ben McCollum from Division II Northwest Missouri State after he won four national titles there. McCollum brought four players with him to Des Moines, including star guard Bennett Stirtz, the Missouri Valley’s leading scorer. Pat Forde has a great feature on how the Bulldogs remade themselves under McCollum with a serious D-II flavor.
The Bulldogs are 30–3 on the season, including a road win over the Kansas State Wildcats and a neutral-court win over the Vanderbilt Commodores. Their three losses (all in conference) came by a combined 13 points. They’ll be a popular Cinderella pick once the bracket is released.
SIU-Edwardsville Cougars (Ohio Valley)
The Cougars are another team making their first NCAA tournament appearance, having won the Ohio Valley to secure their spot in the field. They knocked off the conference regular season champs, the Southeast Missouri State Redhawks, in the title game.
SIUE will be one of the weakest teams in the field, almost assuredly a 16 seed and perhaps one of the participants in the First Four. The Cougars are led by senior guard Ray'Sean Taylor, the OVC’s leading scorer this season and a player who has spent his entire career with SIUE. They have a lousy offense (219th in the nation in scoring) but have a fantastic defense, ranking 21st in points allowed per 100 possessions and eighth in opponents’ two-point field goal percentage. Junior Arnas Sakenis is averaging 1.8 blocks in just 16.4 minutes per game.
Omaha Mavericks (Summit League)
Omaha is—you guessed it—making its first March Madness appearance. This is the Mavericks’ 13th Division I season and the first time since 2019 that they’ve had a winning season.
Coach Chris Crutchfield is an Omaha alum who played both basketball and football for the Mavericks in the late 1980s and early ’90s, back when the school was in Division II. He took over a team that went 5–25 in the season before his arrival and has slowly turned it around. The Mavericks went 9–23 in his first season, 15–18 last year and are now 22–12 headed into the tournament.
Women
George Mason Patriots (Atlantic 10)
George Mason’s men’s team is famous for its 2006 run to the Final Four, but the women had never reached the NCAA tournament. Until now.
The Patriots finished second in the A-10 regular season standings behind the Richmond Spiders, but Richmond was upset in the semifinals of the conference tournament by the Saint Joseph’s Hawks on a buzzer beater. GMU went on to beat Saint Joe’s handily in the title game on Sunday.
George Mason is 27–5 on the season, with only one non-conference loss (a 66–56 loss to the Maryland Terrapins, one of the best teams in the ACC). It boasts impressive out-of-conference wins over the Wake Forest Demon Deacons and Georgetown Hoyas.
The Patriots have three players averaging at least 11 points per game and rank 28th nationally in offensive efficiency and 33rd in defensive efficiency.
Duke Blue Devils (ACC)
Duke continues to excel under coach Kara Lawson, reaching the NCAA tournament for the third straight year. The Blue Devils were ranked 11th in the most recent AP poll and knocked off the No. 6 Notre Dame Fighting Irish and No. 7 NC State Wolfpack en route to their first ACC tournament championship since 2013. Duke is 26–7 on the season, despite having the second-hardest schedule in the country.
TCU Horned Frogs (Big 12)
TCU has two of the most recognizable names in the sport in Hailey Van Lith and Sedona Prince. Van Lith, who previously starred with the Louisville Cardinals and LSU Tigers, is the team’s leading scorer with 17.9 points per game. Prince, who rose to prominence with her social media posts highlighting the disparity between the amenities at the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments while with the Oregon Ducks in 2021, is close behind Van Lith with 17.5 points per game and ranks fourth in the nation with 3.0 blocks per game.
TCU is 31–3 on the season, with all three losses coming against tournament-bound teams. The Horned Frogs rank second in the nation in offensive efficiency and 11th in field goal percentage.
High Point Panthers (Big South)
High Point is the first school this season to officially secure March Madness berths for both its men’s and women’s teams. This is the second NCAA tournament appearance for the women’s program (it got smacked by the UConn Huskies in the opening round of the 2021 tournament).
The Panthers are a defense-first team, ranking 38th in the nation in points allowed per 100 possessions, and have only one player averaging double figures in scoring (junior Nevaeh Zavala with 10.6 points per game).
UCLA Bruins (Big Ten)
UCLA will be one of the favorites to win it all. The Bruins spent most of the season as the No. 1 team in the AP poll before a late-season loss to the USC Trojans knocked them out of the top spot. USC also won the rematch on the final day of the regular season, but those are the only two losses UCLA has suffered all season, and the Bruins won the rubber match in the Big Ten championship game on Sunday.
The Bruins’ success is all about star center Lauren Betts, a Player of the Year contender who averages 19.6 points, 9.7 rebounds and a conference-best 2.9 blocks per game.
Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles (Ohio Valley)
Tennessee Tech tied a school record with 26 wins this season. The Golden Eagles went 18–2 in conference play and have not lost a game since Jan. 9, a 17-game winning streak. Their 26–5 overall record is a little less impressive when you consider that it came against one of the nation’s easiest schedules (307th out of 362 teams in strength of schedule), but they’re still a deep team, with six players averaging at least nine points per game.
South Carolina Gamecocks (SEC)
The defending national champs weren’t quite as dominant as they were last season, when they went 38–0, but they’re still an elite team. The Gamecocks are 30–3, with all three losses coming against teams currently ranked in the top four of the AP poll. They breezed through the SEC tournament with three blowout victories to clinch their ninth conference tournament championship in 11 years.
The player to watch come tournament time is sophomore guard MiLaysia Fulwiley, who is capable of amazing scoring outbursts off the bench. She’s averaging 12.0 points in just 19.3 minutes per game.
UNC Greensboro Spartans (SoCon)
Greensboro is making its second NCAA tournament appearance in program history and its first since 1998. The Spartans have one of the nation’s stingiest defenses (ranking 12th in defensive efficiency and third in points allowed per game) but played just the 298th-hardest schedule. It’s an experienced team (three of its top four scorers are juniors or seniors), complemented by star freshman Nya Smith, the team’s second leading scorer.
South Dakota State Jackrabbits (Summit League)
The Jackrabbits have been a March Madness fixture for the past two decades, with 13 appearances over the last 17 years. They’ve been excellent again this season, compiling a 29–3 overall record that includes wins over the Oregon Ducks and Creighton Blue Jays. All three losses came against power conference teams, two of whom (Duke and the Texas Longhorns) are among the best in the nation.
South Dakota State is an exceptionally experienced team, returning 87.3% of its scoring from last year’s team, a remarkable achievement in the transfer portal era. The star player is junior forward Brooklyn Meyer, who leads the team with 17.4 points per game.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Today’s Digital Cover is Stephanie Apstein’s story on Dodgers manager Dave Roberts’s complicated relationship with L.A. fans.
- Albert Breer has everything you need to know about NFL free agency as the negotiation period opens later today.
- Matt Verderame will be grading every major deal as they roll in throughout the day.
- Verderame also wrote about the Bills’ approach to this offseason and how general manager Brandon Beane is betting on the team’s existing talent.
- Gilberto Manzano spoke with Canelo Álvarez about how the boxer is using his fame to shine a light on Mexican musicians.
- The Steelers upgraded their receiver room by trading for Seahawks star DK Metcalf.
- Josh Allen is the latest quarterback to get paid, signing a record-breaking extension with the Bills.
- Myles Garrett also rewrote the record books with his contract extension with the Browns.
- The Chiefs are keeping the heart of their defense intact, signing linebacker Nick Bolton to a three-year contract extension.
- The Yankees got more bad news about star pitcher Gerrit Cole’s injured elbow.
The top five…
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Every Team to Clinch a March Madness Berth Thus Far.
