DAYTON, Ohio – Meet the San Diego State Aztecs, America’s team.
There are plenty of things working against SDSU in its First Four game of the NCAA Tournament on Tuesday night against North Carolina (6:10 p.m., truTV).
The initial understanding that the game was Wednesday, not Tuesday. The nearly 2,000 miles and four time zones of rushed travel. The lack of a closed-door practice to implement a game plan. The Aztecs’ star 7-foot freshman not playing in 3½ weeks and practicing only once. An uninspiring last few weeks that included a dismal 62-52 loss in the conference tournament, failing to make a basket over the final nine minutes. A big, talented opponent that was handed a magical reprieve after what appeared to be a devastating end to their NCAA Tournament dreams.
But the Aztecs, at least, will have this going for them Tuesday night at 13,409-seat UD Arena: Everyone outside Chapel Hill, N.C., will be rooting for them.
Or, perhaps more accurately, rooting against the Tar Heels.
UNC and its iconic baby blue jerseys have suddenly become everyone’s enemy, a representation — fairly or unfairly — of entitlement, of privilege, of ol’ fashioned, good ol’ boy backroom dealing with a guy named Bubba.
The Tar Heels, by all s, should not be in Dayton or anywhere else in the 68-team field. The Bracket Matrix, which compiles hundreds of projected brackets leading to Selection Sunday, had West Virginia on 243 of 249 and UNC on just 57. SDSU appeared on 241.
ESPN’s Joe Lunardi had the Tar Heels out. CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm had them out.
West Virginia had six Quad 1 wins against the nation’s best teams, including Gonzaga on a neutral court and at Kansas. North Carolina was 1-12 in Quad 1 games, the lone win coming on a neutral floor against UCLA when the Bruins missed a shot at the buzzer.
Then the bracket was revealed Sunday afternoon.
Tar Heels, last team in.
Mountaineers, first team out.
The selection committee consists of 12 athletic directors or conference commissioners from across Division I. Its chair: Bubba Cunningham, who, cough-cough, happens to be the AD at North Carolina.
And who happens to have a clause in his contract with the university that pays him an extra month’s salary for “overload duties, work and responsibilities related” should the Tar Heels be invited to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. His annual base salary is $814,868, making the one-month bonus $67,905. He gets an additional $50,000 should they reach the Sweet 16, $75,000 for the Final Four, $100,000 for a national title. UNC coach Hubert Davis collects a $100,000 bonus for making the tournament.
Cunningham receives the same bonus should the UNC women’s team make the NCAA Tournament, which it did as a No. 3 seed. But he’s not the chair of the women’s selection committee.
And Cunningham can’t say the contract was signed before he was named to the men’s selection committee. He had already started his five-year appointment.
The NCAA is aware of potential conflicts and mandates that an AD or conference commissioner step outside when discussing or voting on the merits of their teams.
“I was not in the room for any of that,” Cunningham said.
“No,” former college coach and respected ESPN commentator Fran Fraschilla tweeted, “but when they wheeled in the hamburger and ice cream bar for the committee, he was. Again, it’s human nature not to disappoint your friends.”
It’s also human nature for West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey to pursue legal action against the NCAA. As the state’s attorney general, he sued the NCAA over regulations forcing second-time transfer athletes to sit out a season — and won an injunction in December 2023 that changed NCAA policy, creating midseason turmoil on rosters across the country with instant eligibility for dozens of players.
Morrisey isn’t about to let this slight go, either.
On Sunday night, he tweeted: “There’s clearly some home cookin’ going on in North Carolina.”
On Monday, he held a news conference with new attorney general JB McCuskey, standing in front of a banner that said, “National Corrupt Athletic Association,” to announce an investigation into the selection committee.
“Nearly every single sports fan, pundit, bracketologist, had WVU as a shoe-in for the tournament,” Morrisey said. “This was a miscarriage of justice and robbery at the highest levels. … This doesn’t the smell test.”
Conspiracy theorists will go a step further, reasoning that not only did the committee put Bubba’s team in the field but snowplowed a path to victory (or victories) to validate the decision.
The last four teams receiving at-large berths go to Dayton for First Four play-in games, one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday. Usually, whichever game feeds into a Thursday/Saturday pod in the main bracket plays Tuesday, and the game feeding into a Friday/Sunday pod on Wednesday.
This year, both play-in games by No. 11 seeds are routed to Friday games in the first round. But instead of having Xavier and Texas play Tuesday, considering Xavier is a 54-minute bus ride from Dayton, the committee had SDSU — the team traveling the farthest — get on a plane 17 hours after the bracket was revealed.
That tumbled over several logistical dominoes which, in the end, might force the Aztecs to face the Tar Heels without a full closed-door practice to implement a game plan.
SDSU initially was under the impression it was playing Wednesday, allowing a Monday morning practice before flying and then another closed-door session in Dayton on Tuesday afternoon.
Instead: They learned an hour later that — surprise — they were in the Tuesday game. The NCAA scheduled their charter for 9 a.m. Monday, arriving in Dayton (with a four-hour flight and three-hour time change) just in time for a mandatory open practice at UD Arena that precludes drilling any specific game strategy because anyone, including UNC s, can attend.
On Tuesday, they’ll do their regular game-day prep that typically features a walkthrough at half speed to save legs.
“This is a new experience, it’s rapid,” Dutcher said after arriving in Dayton. “We didn’t get a chance to practice. We didn’t have our flight confirmed, I think, until like 9:30 last night. Met at the arena at 8:15 (a.m.), flew out at 9, had to come to the public practice.
“They watched a little tape on the plane. We sat down after a quick meal at the hotel and watched individuals. So we’re just in the infancy of a game plan. … But at the end of the day, March is for players.”
Should the Tar Heels get past the Aztecs, they’d have an extra day before playing No. 6 seed Ole Miss on Friday in Milwaukee, only about 400 miles away, instead of the usual cross-country dash by a First Four winner to play less than 48 hours later.
And that part of the bracket is arguably the tournament’s weakest. Friday’s winner against Ole Miss is slated to face injury-wracked No. 3 seed Iowa State.
It sets up rather nicely for the Tar Heels … or for the Aztecs, should they pull off the upset under challenging circumstances. Oddsmakers installed UNC as a 3 1/2-point favorite, which quickly moved to 4, then 4 1/2, then 5, then 5 1/2 in some places as bets poured in on the Tar Heels.
“We’ve all kind of felt the hate, the disagreement, all that, from everybody outside of the Carolina family and fan base,” UNC guard Seth Trimble said. “We’re just running with it. We definitely feel like we’ve got something to prove.”
Added guard RJ Davis: “To have people asking, do you think you’re a tournament team, that irks my soul because I know we are and I know what we’re capable of. It’s really just about proving ourselves right than people wrong.”
