We’re # 69! A Possibly Recurring Gheorghe: The Blog Feature

College basketball used to be much more of a featured subject around here.  The golden age William & Mary basketball under Tony Shaver combined with lots of great “mid-major” hoops stories made for fertile ground for the scribes of G:TB.  

However, somewhere along the way - maybe at the crossroads of massive conference realignment, the transfer portal & NIL making senior laden mid-major teams a thing of the past, and the Samantha Huge hatchet job on Tony Shaver that led William & Mary basketball back into the wilderness - college hoops lost a bit of its luster for me and many others.   This point was driven home to me earlier this season when W&M started the conference season 3-0, leading me to peruse the overall CAA standings.  

I was aware that in 2023 the CAA conference had renamed itself from the Colonial Athletic Association to the Coastal Athletic Association, I guess because most of the teams are along the East Coast (as they always have been - not sure if league leadership realizes that all of the schools are located in original 13 colonies).    What I had not realized was the motley bunch of schools were now members of the CAA.   Monmouth?  NC A&T?  WTF?  Why isn’t the Tribe applying for admission to the Patriot?  Clearly I had not been paying as much attention to college hoops as I had in the past.

Given that W&M is now 5-0 in conference and my grad school alma mater is threatening to be relevant again for the first time in almost 25 years (at least until the wins are vacated for recruiting violations - Wait, are there recruiting violations anymore?), I have committed to paying a bit more attention to college roundball.   Having a 6 year old at home will limit my ability to be a true hoops junkie like I had in the past, but baby steps…

But how to jump back in?  One thought I had was to focus just on possible NCAA tournament teams.  For my money, NCAA Men’s D1 Basketball Tournament remains our greatest collective sporting event.  Notwithstanding all the upheaval in college sports, the month-long spectacle still retains much of its past charm.  68 of the best college basketball teams in the country competing for a national championship.  Doesn’t matter what conference you are from or how blue your blood is, you win and you advance.  

Now, given all the lowly conference champs that will get automatic bids, bracketologists will tell you that the actual bubble for “at large” bids to the tourney is team ranked in the mid-50 or so in the various computer rankings (NET, Ken Pom, Etc.) but here at G:TB I think its more fun to embrace the juvenilia and (like Gronk) focus on #69.

So, this is my commitment to the tens (ones?) of people reading this. Over the next few weeks, I will do my best to profile some of the 69th ranked teams fighting for a bid to this year’s NCAA tournament.  Also, to make Rob happy and drive post count, I will hold the first edition until at least tomorrow!  Unfortunately, the payoff will likely be less than the lead up and that is not saying much…