There’s a reason it will run you several hundred bucks if you want to catch some basketball in the nation’s capital later this week.
And it has nothing to do with the dreadful Washington Wizards.
The get-in price for the NCAA Tournament East Regional reportedly hit a Sweet 16 record of $482, with most tickets going for even more.
No wonder. The region went exactly according to plan.
Duke, St. John’s, UConn, Michigan State. Scheyer, Pitino, Izzo, Hurley.
You’ll hear the soccer term “Group of Death” thrown around in the months leading up to the World Cup. The selection committee absolutely devised a Group of Death in the top-left quadrant of your brackets this year. And it’s going to be scintillating cinema this Friday and Sunday.
This region also featured blue bloods Kansas and UCLA and would have held similar appeal if a few second-round games went the other way. But all due respect to Bill Self and Darryn Peterson, that fantastic ending to a sometimes difficult-to-watch St. John’s-Kansas game set us up for maximum drama.
“Bells (Dylan Darling) comes up to me, and says run (a play for me). So I walk away like, wait a second, he hasn’t scored a bucket and he wants to run a play for himself. And I’m thinking, ‘But he’s Bells!’” Pitino relayed after the Red Storm’s buzzer-beater.
“Bells” shot less than 40% from the field this year! Is Pitino just YOLO-ing it out here in his 200th NCAA Tournament?
Never mind, because it worked, and as a result we get Pitino vs. Duke on a Friday evening, a rematch of the Christian Laettner game in 1992. The other side pits UConn against Michigan State, with a coach in Izzo who may not have any more chances to go capture a second national title.
“When you have UConn, Michigan State, St. John’s now with Rick and how they’re playing, and Duke. I mean, that’s not a regional final, that a Final Four,” Izzo said this week.
The loaded regional certainly raised eyebrows. For one, it could produce Part IV of UConn-St. John’s, who split their regular-season series in dramatic fashion — including UConn’s absolute beatdown of St. John’s 72-40 just a month ago in Hartford — followed by the Johnnies’ 72-52 revenge in the Big East title game.
“Obviously, we both hoped for a fourth meeting in D.C. It stinks a little bit that they threw us both in the same region,” Hurley said. “It feels like the combination of St. John’s being under-seeded, as well as putting us both in the same region. …
“It’s pretty brutal on Twitter, I think, and socials between our fan bases, but I think we have to try to come together Friday night against our opponent so we can have a blood bath on Sunday.”
Any Elite Eight outcome is mouthwatering to college hoops heads. Duke-Michigan State? That would be a rematch of the 2019 Elite Eight in the same exact building, with the Spartans prevailing and ending Zion Williamson’s college career. St. John’s-Michigan State gives you probably the final meeting of the two old ball coaches still hanging on from their generation.
And of course, Duke-UConn — the traditional blue blood trying to find its first title post-Coach K, versus the program Bomani Jones aptly called nouveau riche, with six titles since ‘99 and going for an unbelievable three in four years.
The head coaches have five natties between them, not counting Scheyer’s as a player or assistant, and if you’re all being honest with yourselves, one of the main reasons you’ll tune in is that you hate at least one of them. It’s not my business who that is. Take your pick. But I’d guarantee these guys are going to produce the story of the regionals, if not the tournament writ large, and this Group of Death will be fantastic for the health of the sport.
