This all blows.

Three Big Ten teams in the NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen! For our intents and purposes, that’s exciting. Until you realize...

• ACC: 5
• SEC: 4
• Big Ten: 3
• Pac-12: 1
• Big XII: 1
• AAC: 1
• WCC: 1

That suuuuucks. And we’re not actually counting Gonzaga as being from the West Coast Conference, for what that’s worth. When you have to play two heavily-weighted games to show up in your conference’s title game—and the team you somehow lost to went out in the first round to a mediocre Villanova—no one’s counting you as a little guy.

But this tournament has been ass.

Hell, even in the Round of 32, there were just one each from the SoCon (Wofford), OVC (Murray State), MAC (Buffalo), Atlantic Sun (fuck Liberty), and Big West (Anteaters!). Of those conferences...

• Only the OVC had a second team in the Dance (the First Four’s Belmont).
• The Atlantic Sun was the only “bid-steal” of these, with Liberty snatching Lipscomb Bisons’ bid.
• The other three low-/mid-major conferences in the Round of 32 could not claim a team from their conference closer than 40 places in Kenpom.

And now they’re all out.

Instead, we get five teams from the ACC, the best of whom plays cynical basketball predicated on drawing fouls and beating opponents into submission. And also the Duke Blue Devils, whose “win” over the UCF Knights is generously described as a complete fucking gift.

Instead, we two “powers that be” from the SEC to go with two programs generously described as “upstarts”, both helmed by scummy coaches—one is already on his way to some sort of indictment, the other is Bruce Pearl! There is a real claim that Kentucky is the most sympathetic team left from the SEC!

Instead, we get the three Powers That Be from the Big Ten’s regular season—a coach who loves being a dick to unpaid athletes, Chokington McNobanners, and a team that is personified by a pimply, redheaded 18-year old who memorizes the entire Macklemore album and “impresses” his friends by “rapping” to it.

Cheering for underdogs is fun. Cheering for “underdogs” only described as such because they’re not the elite from a power conference—and shit, if Texas Tech, Virginia Tech, and Oregon are the best we can find, we’re in a bad way—sucks.

Whatever. Go Houston, I guess.

Time to watch the NIT.