What Went Down In The First Round Of The NCAA Tournament

On the flip side, Neil, you have football schools that have been fairly bad in men’s basketball recently. Georgia, which just won the College Football Playoff, is No. 220 in KenPom’s adjusted efficiency metric and has suffered through several losing seasons in a row. (Though it’s worth noting that the women’s team is a No. 6 seed in the tournament.)

I love the football matchups. Don’t you think the selection committee does, too? We know it loves the narratives.

USC and Miami both have good basketball programs, but I think of them as football schools, which makes a first-round matchup like this fun. Amazingly, the two have only faced twice during the modern era in football, both in the 1960s, though they did win national championships just a few years apart in the early 2000s. Interestingly, the winner will face Auburn, which will make for another “football matchup” — in fact, USC-Auburn would be the dream matchup many wished we had gotten on the football field in 2004, when both teams went undefeated but did not play each other in the bowls (Auburn beat Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl while USC absolutely pasted Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl).