Not a coincidence indeed Mayhem.  I predicted this well before the 2025 season.  There will be few, if any upsets by mid-majors as so few will be in the tournament to begin with and the Power 5 will get any player who shows promise from the other conferences.  In 2025 there was one first round upset (McNeese over Clemson) and two first round upsets in 2026 (VCU over UNC and High Point over Wisconsin).  So what made March Madness so great is now gone.

Yet the ratings were up 5% to watch predictable outcomes one after another.  I attribute this to legalized gambling which is keeping the ratings up.  

In 2016, even though GW did not make the tournament (we did win the NIT) there was hope we could make it and be competitive.  Now the NIT is our ceiling unless we are somehow able to win the conference tournament , something we have done exactly twice in my 58 years watching GW hoops.  Bottom line is that I have minimal interest in following GW or March Sadness any more. 

And when this recognition finally sets in for the GW Administration someone is going to ask the important question ... why are we spending so much money when we could play in the Patriot League for less money and have the same chance (maybe better) of playing in the NCAA tournament? I promise you that day is coming soon. You can't spend $5 million plus on basketball year in and year out (including NIL) and have virtually no chance at the Big Dance absent an A-10 tournament championship. Why not spend $2 million or less and have perhaps a better chance? It sucks that we have to talk like that but reality bites sometimes.

Saint Joes and Dayton 2nd tourney road victories moved the A10 to 5 out of their last 6 wins, all 6 true road games

Saint Joes plays at New Mexico tonight, Dayton plays tomorrow

Gwmayhem wrote:

 When Mason and VCU lost their national semifinal games, these were two of the worst rated Final 4 games to ever air on CBS.    

Sorry, but you are dead wrong about that, though I generally agreed with and appreciated your take.

GMU-UF 2006 -- 9.1
Butler-VCU 2011 --- 8.3

In comparison

UNC-Duke 2022 -- 8.6

https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/ncaa-final-four-ratings-history-most-watched-games-cbs-tbs-nbc/

Last edited by Alum '04 (3/24/2026 8:00 pm)

Alum '04 wrote:

Gwmayhem wrote:

 When Mason and VCU lost their national semifinal games, these were two of the worst rated Final 4 games to ever air on CBS.    

Sorry, but you are dead wrong about that, though I generally agreed with and appreciated your take.

GMU-UF 2006 -- 9.1
Butler-VCU 2011 --- 8.3

In comparison

UNC-Duke 2022 -- 8.6

https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/ncaa-final-four-ratings-history-most-watched-games-cbs-tbs-nbc/

Thanks for pointing this out Alum '04.  My statement was one of those things I had heard a while ago and wrongly assumed it was true today.  There are three things to note:

1) I'd have been better off saying total viewership rather than rating.  You can see that viewership for VCU and Mason in the final 4 was on the low end, to a greater extent than was the television rating.

2) Since Mason and VCU, Turner has now handled a number of Final 4's (as part of its broadcast partnership agreement with CBS) and viewership numbers on Turner have historically been lower than on CBS.

3) The age of streaming has brought far greater audience fragmentation with individuals having far more choices for entertainment than ever before.  It stands to reason that ratings would be higher in a day and age when there was no Netflix, Amazon, HBO Max, Apple TV, etc.

The Dude wrote:

Danny Hurley and the 2 Time National Champions UCONN beat Michigan State

Back To the elite 8 for UCONN!

MSU fought back from 16 down only to tie it up, but couldn't get over the hump and take the lead. Had to be absolutely excruciating.

Between 2013-2016 my HS played the Sr. Hurley and St. Anthony 5 times. We won 4 of the 5. That was something. Before that we couldn't get within 40 points of that team. Few NJ schools could. Great coach.

UCONN comeback for the ages to beat Duke!!

Hurley and UCONN are back in the Final 4!!

Mullins from the logo!! What a thriller

I was thinking how smart Duke was to wait until 10 seconds left and then foul to deny the 3 to tie, but it obviously didn’t work out for them.

I am no fan of Hurley or UConn, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching them beat Duke, and that ending was amazing!

As is often the case in this tournament, Duke-UCONN offered an incredibly exhilarating finish for one team while simultaneously serving up about the most imaginable heartbreak on the other side.  I attended the games on Friday night and I can assure you that I did not see this coming.  Duke-St. John's resembled a heavyweight championship fight (do these even exist anymore?) with each team alternating winning rounds.  The Red Storm was determined to make this game all about toughness and I couldn't get over how well Duke responded, personified by Caleb Foster who played exceptionally well after breaking a bone in his foot less than three weeks ago.  It was a shame that Foster could only give Duke 14 underwhelming minutes on Sunday but ironically, the guy who really stepped up for him was Cayden Boozer.  On the other side, UCONN had blown a 19 point lead to Michigan State but to their credit, took back the lead on their next possession on two occasions.  I do not enjoy the histrionics and petulant antics of Hurley but I'll give him lots of credit in that he instills a belief among his players that they are not going to lose regardless of the game's circumstances. Maybe having Bill Murray giddily jump up and down right behind the bench helps keep things loose too.

Dissecting the game's final sequence would be easy to do even if this was one of the first games you ever witnessed.  Boozer could have stood still with the ball in which case there would have been a small chance of getting stripped but a much larger chance of getting fouled.  He, or his coach, could have called timeout.  (Easy to say in retrospect but you just can't lose a game like this without having used all of your timeouts.)  Instead, we should remember that a split-second decision was required and Boozer instinctively thought to get the ball downcourt where there were no UCONN defenders in which case Duke could have dribbled the clock out or dunked to put the game away.  He will unfairly be grouped with someone like Georgetown's Fred Brown who mistakenly handed the ball to James Worthy, or Michigan's Chris Webber who called a timeout that his team didn't have, as someone who made a boneheaded play to cost his team a shot at a championship.   No matter your feelings towards Duke (and I understand all of them), it lacks human decency not to feel for a young man who sat in the locker room in tears and told reporters that he had just ruined his team's season.  How (fortunate) he grew up, or that he plays for Duke, really shouldn't enter into the equation.

The temptation is to suggest that Michigan-Arizona is now the de facto national championship game and whoever wins that one will be crowned on Monday night.  This all makes sense logically but when it comes to The Big Dance, we should know by now to throw logic out the door.  A freshman from Indiana sank a 35 foot shot to keep his season alive and now gets to play in the Final 4 in his home state, the same one that gave us Hoosiers.  It doesn't get much more storybook than this.