For a moment on Sunday evening, the Colorado State Rams reveled in the greatest sensation March Madness has to offer: a clutch three-pointer to take the lead in the final seconds of regulation.
Rams star guard Nique Clifford backed down a Maryland defender, then fired a daring pass across the court to wide-open guard Jalen Lake. With the Rams down 70-68 to the fourth-seeded Maryland Terrapins and just under 10 seconds left in the game, Lake went for the win and connected, sinking a go-ahead three-pointer for a one-point lead. The three-pointer left enough time on the clock for a Maryland possession and possible answer back, but if the Rams entered March Madness with the chance to make their first Sweet Sixteen since 1969 — and only needed to hold their opponent scoreless for five seconds to accomplish it — it would be a best-case scenario situation.
Instead, Maryland’s Derik Queen spoiled the moment and shocked the Rams with a game-winning bank-shot buzzer beater as time expired for a 72-71 Maryland win. Colorado State found itself on the losing end of the best finish of the opening weekend of March Madness, with an admirable effort amounting to an abundance of what-if’s and a soul-crushing Sunday evening in Seattle.
The Rams’ loss represented more than just a fantastic finish and the first buzzer-beater of March Madness — it was the closest any Cinderella team came to dancing in next week’s Sweet Sixteen round.
March Madness has not been kind to underdogs this year. Consider these two statistics from OptaSTATS: no team seeded 11 through 16 reached the Sweet Sixteen in an NCAA tournament for the first time since 2007, and only four conferences are represented in the Sweet Sixteen for the first time ever (with the next lowest total of conferences represented almost double that total at seven). The weekend’s marquee matchup featured 10th-seeded Arkansas knocking off second-seeded St. John’s, but even in that case a head coach with a national championship under his belt that was leading a team from the nation’s best basketball conference, the SEC, defeated a program from outside the Power Four conferences. The changing of the guard extended beyond the bracket as well: Virginia hired Ryan Odom as its next head coach, less than a decade after he pulled off the first 1-16 upset in March Madness history when his UMBC Terriers defeated top-seeded Virginia. The NCAA Tournament invited plenty of Cinderella candidates, but the competition dismissed them in two swift rounds.
The Sweet Sixteen will include all four one seeds, three two seeds, two three seeds, three four seeds, one five seed, two six seeds and John Calipari’s 10th-seeded Arkansas Razorbacks. Only two of the 16 head coaches of the remaining teams have won a national championship before, which adds a level of intrigue and novelty, and the back-to-back reigning national champion UConn Huskies fell to top-seeded Florida on Sunday. But one of the most distinctive and cherished aspects of March Madness, the deep tournament runs by mid-major underdog teams, is absent from this year’s action.
The biggest change in college athletics fits the bill as a likely culprit. Name, image and likeness legislation, also known as NIL, has allowed athletes across conferences and sports to monetize their image and likeness while still at their school. In recent seasons, programs have organized NIL efforts to attract recruits to their school while operating within the rules. In reality, the opening of the floodgates has turned college sports into a bit of a Wild West until the powers that be enact more specific legislation, but the programs with generous boosters and funding have parlayed their resources into recruiting successes, and those recruiting successes into competitiveness at a national stage. Head coaches and athletic department officials now have war chests of NIL money at their disposal to dish out to potential difference-makers, increasing the already significant competitive divides between conferences.
This dynamic has played out most clearly in NCAA football, in which the top programs and conferences like the SEC and Big Ten land elite recruits and enjoy major talent advantages over smaller schools, then pummel their opposition into oblivion. Big-name schools have traditionally dominated football (though the 12-team College Football Playoff allows more underdogs to prove their mettle in the postseason than the previous systems), while March Madness has been the domain of underdogs, a tournament where even small schools are guaranteed a role in a David-against-Goliath matchup on a national stage.
Yet two rounds into this year’s tournament, the most prominent storyline is the chalkiness of the bracket and the pristine performances of the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12. Those conferences, along with top overall seed Duke, have turned their size and talent advantages into March Madness wins.
Think teamwork and clutch shotmaking are the only factors that have gone into this year’s exciting finishes? Just listen to Queen’s response shortly after his buzzer-beater to dash Colorado State’s hopes. Asked why players listen to Maryland head coach Kevin Willard, Queen offered a comedic take on his coach’s role.
“First, he do pay us the money… so we’ve got to listen to him,” Queen said with a laugh. “We all trust him, because he’s like a player-coach. He wants nothing but the best for us, and he coaches hard.”
The response drew laughter from the media and a face-palm from Willard, but the insight was more of a dose of reality than exaggeration. It’s not an indictment on Maryland, either — NIL is what it takes to compete in major-conference football and basketball — but a reminder that the most significant development in college sports of this century is ingrained into every March Madness game, even when seemingly drowned out by the college bands and student-section roars.
Cinderella hopes may be extinguished this year, but declaring the extinction of miracle runs in March Madness in the NIL era is premature. A couple of obvious points first: one tournament is a small sample size, and accomplished programs like Duke, UConn, North Carolina and Kansas have been running up the scores on small schools for years. Also, even historic dominance by top seeds, such as all four no. 1 seeds making the Final Four in 2008, has been quite rare itself and more of a statistical oddity than a trend. And lastly, NIL is simply not eradicating the thrills of March Madness, from the unparalleled quantity of games on at any one time to the passionate fanbases on screen to the nail-biting finishes in both rounds. The chance for a program to win its first title is one of the outcomes I’m pulling for this year, and the Final Four in San Antonio could feature four coaches in search of their first title. If March Madness is becoming too predictable, I’ll need to see a perfect bracket from this year first (according to ESPN, no perfect brackets remain).
Is name, image and likeness making its mark on March Madness? Definitely. The business of sports is always lurking and essential to the on-court product, even under the brightest lights. But does this development dictate that the historic dominance by the most loaded conferences and programs, the story of the 2025 bracket, will be the case on an annual basis? Is the glass slipper permanently shattered by NIL?
Nope, at least not conclusively or permanently. Not based on the outcomes of one tournament, one round of games or one last-second bank shot by a heroic Maryland Terrapin.
Riker's Block 