Diluted Big Dance this year?

[bonarae]

Or is this year would become deserving of any of the titles:

"Year of the True Cinderella Winning It All"
"Year of the Mid/Low-Major"
"Year of the Many Upsets"

With SMU and now Louisville staying home this year (the latter, supported by its president, self-imposed a men's basketball postseason ban just days ago), is this edition becoming more likely to be run by the low major/mid-major schools who win their conference tournaments? Or is this edition would become more of a dud?

[Mvemjsunpx]

I wish this kind of thing would happen on the women's side.

[GannonFan]

SMU's not a great team - the likliehood of them making a deep run in the tourney was never all that good. Louisville is certainly a hit, that's a team that had Sweet 16 written all over them and possibly even more than that. But I'm not going to say the tournament is over just because Louisville's not there. Last year you probably had 6-7 teams who could win it all, this year maybe a little more with possibly 10 teams or so who could win it. I'm not really sure a true Cinderella team steps in there and wins it, and I don't really see a host of mid major teams who would do it either.

[GannonFan]

And btw, what Louisville did, taking the postseason ban this year to basically forgo future penalties and not impact their recruiting, really was a crappy move. They have two graduate transfers on that team right now who transferred in this year after graduating early elsewhere, and neither of whom is suspected of any wrongdoing, and those guys get the brunt of the punishment despite being a top 20 team all year. Way to screw with the student athlete yet again.