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Thursday, December 26, 2024
We begin our review of the bubble over the years with the first five years of the 64-team NCAA Tournament era, 1985-89, including the first big snub (and blow-up) in the expanded tourney era, a 14 seed at-large team nearly making the Elite 8 and a conference going from a national champion one year to no team in the Big Dance at all the next.
The Horizon League through some rocky times has seen a pair of programs emerge as its best, and Northern Kentucky and Wright State engaged in a good league race in 2018-19 with the Norse making their second NCAA trip in three years.
For a host of reasons, these are dark times right now for the Horizon League. And the 2017-18 season may have been rock bottom.
A second straight late-season charge by UNC Greensboro in the Southern Conference has a happier ending this season. And the Spartans’ story may have another chapter or two left.
The 2016-17 season continued a run of a bumpy couple of years for the Horizon League, with more than its share of changes and challenges.
It is redemption time for the SEC after a magical night continues a great NCAA Tournament run for the conference. Plus several coaching moves and early entrant decisions take up the news on the day.
For a year at least, the Horizon League harkened back to some glory years, with a collection of individual talent the conference hasn’t seen in perhaps a long time.
Rather quietly, Bryce Drew is building a formidable program at Valparaiso, which won a Horizon League title for the third time in four years.
The Final Four is here at last, the culmination of the 2015 NCAA Tournament very near now with the national semifinals tonight and the championship game coming Monday night.
We should know who the Pac-12 Coach of the Year will be after Sunday. Plus a team can’t go to their locker room, an expected showdown may have lost its luster, and a Cardinal is long gone with the regular season almost over.
