If you’re looking for a team or teams to cheer for in the four NCAA Tournament games being played in Salt Lake City on Thursday, there are some sweet choices, other than the ones you either researched or randomly selected in your brackets. Not only that, but the ones you ultimately pick are, according to sports psychology, a reflection of … you.
For some, the automatic tendency is to go for the underdogs. In this case, that would be 15-seed Long Beach State against 2-seed Arizona, 13-seed Samford vs. 4-seed Kansas,12-seed McNeese against 5-seed Gonzaga, and to a lesser extent 10-seed Nevada vs. 7-seed Dayton.
Why do folks cheer for the ‘dogs? In the tournament, that’s inherent in the name March Madness. Nobody, traditionally or currently, likes to go straight chalk in this thing. The possibility of upsets is what gives the dance its spice, its flavor, its verve, its life.
Taking a deeper dive into the human condition, a sports psychologist once told me that one of the reasons people pull for underdogs is because they see themselves reflected in the athletes, in the teams with everything stacked against them. And inside of that, they see daylight, they see hope, they see the chance, even when odds formidably lean against them, to rise up, to overcome, to beat those odds, to do hard, unexpected things in their own lives, to win.
If Long Beach State, a team that had its coach fired out from under it, effective at season’s end, before it qualified for the tournament, can now beat Arizona, an opponent with a big name that lost six fewer games than the Beach, then guys and gals who work their tails off scrubbing filthy autos and trucks at the car wash just might be able to … who knows? … own that durn car wash one day.
That’s the kind of belief the world needs.
If Samford can find a way to knock off Kansas or McNeese can manage to pop Gonzaga, then you or your child or your aunt or your cousin might just be elected president of the United States some day. The power of the unlikely dream is the appeal of the Big Dance.
(Charlie Riedel | AP) Kansas guard Dajuan Harris Jr. (3) gets past BYU guard Dallin Hall (30) to put up a shot during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Lawrence, Kan.
On the other hand, there are the people who lean toward the dominant, the powerful, the favored, the team or teams that might not win all the time, but the ones that win a whole lot more than they lose. Rooting for teams like that, hitching your wagon to the stars, the psychologist said, attaching your identity to that of a perennial winner, a likely winner, makes you a winner.
If Arizona wins, if Kansas wins, if Gonzaga wins, some folks figure, then all is right with the world, the sky is blue, the grass is green, the planet will spin, the sun will rise and set, the moon will shine according to what is expected. Surprise, especially if it is conjured by some no-name upstart, is the enemy. People who are drawn to power like it when power succeeds.
Beyond that, there are those around these parts who find other reasons to root for or to root against. Some relatively objective fans, for instance, have grown to appreciate what Gonzaga has done through the years, becoming one of the most consistent programs in the college game. It’s a western team that has transitioned from the cute little puppy it once was into the menacing Bulldog it has become.
Conversely, BYU fans looking for a team here to get behind could still hold the victories the Zags had over the Cougars in the WCC against them. BYU got its win here and there, including that rousing victory over Gonzaga at the Marriott Center a few years back that was so filled with enthusiasm and energy that it nearly loosened that building from its foundation. But more often than not, the Bulldogs punched BYU in the teeth.
Maybe Utah fans will give a boost to Arizona, a fellow colleague/opponent in the Pac-12, a dead league walking, a former rival walking straight out the door to the Big 12 next season, alongside the Utes.
Samford has its charms. It’s a team from a small Baptist school in Alabama — Homewood, to be exact — that plays basketball as though its shorts were on fire, chucking up 3s and hitting around 40 percent of them. They call this brand of hoop “Bucky Ball,” named after its coach Bucky McMillan, who led the Bulldogs this season to their first entry in the NCAA Tournament in just shy of a quarter of a century. McMillan was a high school coach before he got to Samford and has built a team his community is over the moon for, hoping for a national splash right here in Salt Lake.
Samford, which at one point rolled up a 17-game win streak playing its unique way, bombing away, finishing the season at 29-5 in the Southern League, is a Cinderella pick by some prognosticators, particularly because the Kansas Jayhawks have struggled a bit of late.
McNeese is another “smaller” team from a “smaller” conference — the Southland — that can efficiently hit the 3, although the Cowboys don’t jack up a preposterous amount of them. The Cowboys do hunker down on defense, looking for steals and transition points. They don’t turn the ball over much, but they cause a whole lot of turnovers themselves. It is a 12-versus-5 game, too, a first-round match that historically has caused some difficulty for the higher seed.
Another notable tidbit about McNeese against Gonzaga is that both teams have a player from Utah’s own Wasatch Academy — guard Mike Saunders Jr. for McNeese and Zags guard Nolan Hickman.
As mentioned, Long Beach State has one strange story to tell this season, having finished 10-10 in Big West play, losing its last five regular-season games. That’s when school bosses decided, after 17 years, coach Dan Monson needed the boot. He stayed with the team through the league tournament, which Long Beach won, qualifying for the madness.
The Beach pushes the ball, depending on crisp interior passing and a bunch of 2-point shots, the closer to the basket the better.
And one more oddity to the game between LBSU and Arizona is that the coaches are good friends, their wives and kids are good friends. They both have connections to Gonzaga. It is said that when Wildcats coach Tommy Lloyd was a JC player in Washington, he wanted to play for the Zags, but then-Bulldogs coach Monson told him he wasn’t good enough to play there. But he also told the youngster he might one day make a good coach. He ended up coaching as an assistant in … yeah, Spokane.
Dayton is interesting because any basketball team with the nickname Flyers has to be that. Has to be. They have a talented forward, name of DaRon Holmes II who averages better than 20 points and eight rebounds. He was the only player in the Atlantic 10 to finish in the top 10 in scoring, rebounding, field goal percentage and blocked shots. Not bad. The Flyers lost in the A-10 title game to Duquesne, BYU’s first-round opponent in Omaha.
(Tom R. Smedes | AP) Nevada coach Steve Alford gives a pat on the chest to guard Kenan Blackshear (13) during the second half of the team's NCAA college basketball game against Colorado State on Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2024, in Reno, Nev.
Nevada, coached by Steve Alford, handed Utah State its first defeat at home this season, no small task at the Spectrum, beating the Aggies by 15 points. The Wolfpack lost in the Mountain West title game to Colorado State, finishing at 26-7. If you’re an Alford fan, cheer away.
If not, pick somebody else. The palette of selections is sweet, whatever they say about ... you.
