{"id":664495,"date":"2026-03-18T08:20:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T08:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/664495\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T08:20:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T08:20:55","slug":"cinderellas-bring-the-magic-to-march-madness-but-are-they-going-the-way-of-phone-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/664495\/","title":{"rendered":"Cinderellas bring the magic to March Madness. But are they going the way of phone books?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage of the First Four<\/a> from 2026 Men\u2019s March Madness.<\/a><\/p>\n

Homer Drew sat comfortably in his Phoenix home on a Sunday afternoon, an eye fastened on the clock, waiting for his grandkids to arrive. He didn\u2019t want to waste a second of their visit.<\/p>\n

The calendar had rolled to March, a month that for the 41 years he coached never belonged to peace or stillness.<\/p>\n

It had been nearly 30 years since the moment that would forever define his career, one that made an arena tremble with the particular voltage that only this month knows how to generate.<\/p>\n

\"NCAA
\n \"NCAA<\/p>\n

BEAT OUR EXPERTS<\/p>\n

Predict how you think the tournament will
play out. Can you beat one of our experts?<\/p>\n

In 1998, his Valparaiso team had 2.5 seconds left in the NCAA Tournament\u2019s first round against fourth-seeded Ole Miss. The ball rocketed the length of the floor, then redirected to Bryce Drew, Homer\u2019s son, just beyond the perimeter.<\/p>\n

Bryce Drew gathered the ball in rhythm and sent it flying toward history. The chalkiness of the bracket collapsed \u2014\u00a0one blink, and a No. 13 seed from northwest Indiana had turned March on its head.<\/p>\n

Forever known simply as \u201cThe Shot<\/a>,\u201d the miracle carved Valparaiso into the mythology of March,\u00a0embodying the moment the tournament always seems to deliver, where an afterthought program can conquer the brightest stage.<\/p>\n

But with another tournament nearing all these years later, Homer Drew had been hearing a different version of the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cDad,\u201d his sons have told him, \u201cbe happy you retired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bryce and Scott Drew \u2014\u00a0both head coaches, with Scott winning a national title at Baylor in 2021\u2014 tend to end the conversation when it wanders toward what college basketball has become and what it means for\u00a0those improbable jolts of magic \u2014\u00a0ones that feel the most fragile to Drew.<\/p>\n

For generations, March Madness delivered on its name. A tournament in which impossibility gives out and the bracket bends to the whims of teams buried deep. Valpo. Or Fairleigh Dickinson. Or VCU. But across the sport, coaches and former players increasingly wonder whether the delicate alchemy that produced those runs is disappearing. In a landscape governed by money and movement, are Cinderella stories becoming harder to conjure?<\/p>\n

The 2025 NCAA Tournament opened with the customary early tremors \u2014 seven first-round games when teams topped better-seeded opponents, followed by four more in the second round. But the total of 11 lagged behind each of the previous three years, and once opening weekend passed, the bracket recalibrated around the sport\u2019s giants.<\/p>\n

Only one double-digit survivor lingered \u2014\u00a0No. 10 Arkansas, out of the mighty SEC \u2014\u00a0before Texas Tech extinguished its run in the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n

By the final weekend, the bracket looked almost preordained: all four No. 1 seeds marched into the Final Four for the first time in 17 years and just the second time.<\/p>\n

Whether Cinderellas are going the way of phone books is up for debate. But if so, what becomes of March \u2014 the month that delivered George Mason\u2019s 2006 Final Four run, VCU\u2019s charge there five years later or Florida Atlantic\u2019s unlikely trip to the national semifinal three years ago?<\/p>\n

Some around the sport do caution against that leap, with only a small sample of single-elimination games in the era of player compensation and immediate eligibility for transfers.\u00a0ESPN analyst and former Duke center Jay Bilas, for one, warned of jumping to conclusions, arguing the sport\u2019s new economics may spread talent more widely.<\/p>\n

The tournament\u2019s design safeguards some possibility of chaos \u2014 every conference champion earns an automatic bid, funneling dozens of low- and mid-majors into the bracket each year with a chance to rattle it. This March\u2019s candidates include No. 10 Santa Clara and No. 11 Miami (Ohio) and No. 13 Hofstra. Of course, changes could be coming there, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe average fan wants to see a 16 (seed) beat a 1 and a 15 beat a 2,\u201d said Tobin Anderson, whose No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson team knocked off top-seeded Purdue in 2023. \u201cThat\u2019s what the beauty of the NCAA Tournament is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Cinderella gliding unnoticed into the ballroom, the teams that wind up warping March\u2019s history often arrive from towns most couldn\u2019t place on a map.<\/p>\n

All winter, they live in leagues that float somewhere outside the sport\u2019s spotlight. Tuesday nights unfold in half-filled gyms, broadcasts buried on secondary networks, rosters stitched together from players overlooked by blue-blood recruiters.<\/p>\n

Then March arrives, and somewhere in the bracket the glass slipper finds its foot.<\/p>\n

For a weekend or two, the country learns their names. Fans Google for more, and, almost overnight, become fluent in the lore of a school they barely realized played Division I days earlier. The way the tournament unveils new characters to the country each spring has always been part, if not the part, of the enchantment.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople get excited when a team like Valparaiso has arrived,\u201d Homer Drew said.<\/p>\n

The magic has never been randomness alone. Behind many of the tournament\u2019s most cherished overthrows was something less visible than magic: time. And that\u2019s what, in 2026, is disappearing.<\/p>\n

Those teams were rarely assembled in a hurry. They were grown, a low- or mid-major staff finding the guard who bigger programs passed on, the undersized forward without the recruiting stars, the late bloomer. Players who came back year after year.<\/p>\n

Anderson\u2019s Fairleigh Dickinson squad achieved one of the most memorable upsets in tournament history without star power. It was defined by \u201cgreat chemistry,\u201d a unit that had \u201cgone through their lumps and taken some losses\u201d enough to develop cohesion strong enough to unsettle younger, perhaps more gifted high-major opponents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a group of guys that are highly connected around a common cause,\u201d said Shaka Smart, the current Marquette coach who helmed the 2011 VCU team remembered for its \u201chavoc\u201d-inducing defense, \u201cit gives you a chance to do something really special.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valparaiso\u2019s 1998 sorcery grew from experience \u2014\u00a0its five leading scorers were upperclassmen, and nearly 80 percent of the team\u2019s scoring capital returned from the previous year. VCU\u2019s starting lineup featured four seniors and a junior. Florida Atlantic\u2019s 2022-23 Final Four folklore followed a similar blueprint, returning 77.5 of its minutes and 82.1 percent of its production.<\/p>\n

That was the sport\u2019s quiet bargain: Mid-majors developed their rosters in peace, the powers harvested and raided less aggressively, and every March a few veteran teams arrived armed with enough scar tissue and institutional memory to make the bracket buckle.<\/p>\n

The Wichita State Shockers teams in the early 2010s \u2014 with future pros Fred VanVleet, Cleanthony Early and Ron Baker anchoring the roster \u2014 rode that continuity to a Final Four run in 2013 and an undefeated regular season in 2014.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n The 2013 Wichita State Shockers made it all the way to the Final Four before falling to Louisville in a national semifinal. (Bob Donnan \/ USA Today)<\/p>\n

Those players, Smart said, \u201ccomplemented each other so well, and they knew each other so well in terms of what they needed on the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

But now \u2026 \u201cIt\u2019s going to be hard to have that as a mid-major.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roster continuity has grown increasingly rare. The number of Division I men\u2019s basketball transfers has surged from 957 in 2019 to 2,530 in 2025 \u2014 the latter number making up 40 percent of the total men\u2019s basketball players in the season. The NCAA Tournament field reflects the churn: The 2025 bracket included 297 total transfers, up from 213 the year before, according to Timark Partners. While transferring affects all levels of the sport, the top players identified and developed by the mid-majors often leave for bigger paydays at power conference schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cMid-majors are like prep schools now,\u201d said Jim Larranaga, who coached George Mason to the Final Four in 2006 and later piloted Miami to the 2023 national semifinals. \u201cIt\u2019s really to prepare to make more money at a high major.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson described the familiar ache of the mid-major life cycle: guiding a player\u2019s growth, then watching as the powerhouses come calling just as the payoffs should have begun.<\/p>\n

Tony Skinn, George Mason\u2019s second-leading scorer during the Patriots\u2019 2006 run and now the coach of his alma mater, said the sport\u2019s new financial reality, in which rosters are reaching a reported $20 million, as at Kentucky, has widened the divide between the sport\u2019s \u201chaves and have-nots,\u201d so much so that both Skinn and Smart said keeping the rosters that fueled their Cinderella runs today would be \u201cnext to impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even programs that strike on a winning formula watch it unravel the following season. Saint Peter\u2019s retained 18.9 percent of its minutes and 16.2 percent of its scoring after stunning its way to the Elite Eight in 2022 \u2014 also losing coach Shaheen Holloway, who took over his alma mater, Seton Hall. Oakland brought back 26 percent of its services following its 2024 upset of Kentucky as a No. 14 seed.<\/p>\n

Florida Atlantic\u2019s 2023 Final Four team was a rare exception, returning more than 90 percent of its minutes the next season. Its coach, Dusty May, came back too, but then departed for Michigan, a top seed in this season\u2019s tournament.<\/p>\n

Even amid the swirl of money and movement, March remains volatile. Its volcanic potential hasn\u2019t evaporated so much as moved. Upsets still tear seams in the bracket, and lower seeds still claw their way into the second weekend.<\/p>\n

Instead of the lightly recruited mid-major rosters growing old together, today\u2019s Cinderella is assembled through the portal. Experience still wins March \u2014 it\u2019s just built differently.<\/p>\n

Smart said the modern bracket buster could look like a power-conference team seeded lower in the field stocked with guys seasoned by years in college basketball. He pointed to UCLA\u2019s First Four-to-Final-Four run in 2021 as the modern template, an 11-seed powered by veteran players who caught fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll still see an 11 seed make a deep run, but it\u2019ll be more a team like that as opposed to our team in 2011 (at VCU) or George Mason or Wichita State,\u201d Smart said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re talking about lower seeds advancing in the NCAA Tournament,\u201d Smart added, \u201cI think we will continue to see that. If you\u2019re talking about teams coming from the Colonial or the Horizon or the Missouri Valley going to the Final Four, I don\u2019t think we will see that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others around the sport offer a similar narrowed forecast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe days of an NBA All-Star and another NBA (draft) pick playing at Butler are over,\u201d UCLA coach Mick Cronin said, a nod to the 2010 Butler team that made the title game behind Gordon Hayward and Shelvin Mack.<\/p>\n

Skinn said the next VCU or George Mason may be few and far between. More likely, he said, mid-majors will toast to Sweet 16 runs that in another era might have stretched deeper into March.<\/p>\n

But recent brackets offer reason for both alarm and restraint.<\/p>\n

Just two years before the chalk Final Four of 2025, Florida Atlantic stormed to the national semifinal as a No. 9 seed. Princeton broke into the Sweet 16 as a No. 15 seed. No. 5 seed San Diego State, out of the Mountain West, sprinted to the national championship game.<\/p>\n

The next season brought Oakland stunning Kentucky as a No. 14 seed. No. 13 Yale toppled No. 4 Auburn.<\/p>\n

As such, not everyone around the sport is ready to declare the Cinderella blueprint obsolete. Bilas warned against reading too much into a single tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year people take one data point and try to make a trend out of it.\u201d Bilas said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s not reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Bilas\u2019 view, NIL and the portal have, in some ways, spread out the talent at the power conference level, broadening the number of teams capable of competing. A study by Timark Partners and AD Advisors tracking more than 14,000 Division I men\u2019s basketball transfers since 2019 found roughly 65 percent either moved down a level or failed to find a new roster spot entirely \u2014\u00a0a reminder that portal movement is not always a one-way escalator up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the same people that were predicting the demise of college sports were predicting the weather,\u201d Bilas said, \u201cnone of us would go outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

P.J. Couisnard, who averaged 10.2 points and 6.2 rebounds when Wichita State earned a Sweet 16 berth in 2006, sees a way through the current turbulence.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlways a possibility for a Cinderella,\u201d said Couisnard, now an assistant at his alma mater, \u201cespecially in these days where a school might spend whatever they got to to get one of them players that could carry you through March Madness.<\/p>\n

\u201cGive it time. \u2026 This is completely new. We are only (five) years into NIL.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even some of those most sentimental about the sport\u2019s traditional landscape stop short of declaring Cinderella dead.<\/p>\n

Anderson believes March remains fertile ground for surprise. Double-digit seeds will keep landing punches, he said, and veteran teams with continuity can still become dangerous come March. But the runway is shortening \u2014 and for the 14s through 16s, liftoff is becoming harder.<\/p>\n

Even Homer Drew, 81 and long retired, is torn. He believes the sport\u2019s new economics assist power-conference teams and could eventually \u201cwater down the Cinderella stories,\u201d but warned it may take several more years of data before declaring the era done for.<\/p>\n

If the old version of Cinderella is indeed being boxed in, there is polarizing debate on how to proceed.<\/p>\n

Tournament expansion, an idea the NCAA has flirted with the past few years, is feared by some coaches as a move that could push the imbalance even further. Anderson said \u201cno one wants\u201d a bracket so sprawling that the sport\u2019s smallest programs are pushed even deeper to the margins.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to protect the game,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one wants it to be where the small schools get knocked out. The tournament, that\u2019s our baby. We got to make sure we take care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Expanding the field from 68 to 72 or 76 is expected to be revisited<\/a> after this year\u2019s tournament. Skinn argued that a modest expansion could pry open a few more seats at the table for mid-majors in a tournament ecosystem increasingly shaped by power-conference schedules and the metrics that reward them.<\/p>\n

Drew imagined a far more radical fix \u2014 a 128-team field that would drastically widen the tournament\u2019s doorway.<\/p>\n

Optimists believe March will always manufacture wonder \u2014\u00a0a veteran mid-major that somehow stayed intact, a portal-built underdog catching heat or a power-conference sleeper cresting at the right time. Pessimists see something more delicate fading away: the classic mid-major climb from obscurity to folklore.<\/p>\n

And maybe that is the real question hovering over March: not whether the bracket will crack, but whose fingerprints will be left holding the pieces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of the First Four from 2026 Men\u2019s March Madness. Homer Drew sat comfortably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,354,231,772,1544,10],"class_list":{"0":"post-664495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-mens-college-basketball","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaab","14":"tag-sports-business"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116249211297125917","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}