Today “March Madness” — the NCAA postseason basketball tournament — begins. (No, let’s not pretend those play-in games count.) Sixty-four teams will compete, but despite a 25-5 record and a spot in the AP’s ranking of the top 25 teams in the country, the SMU Mustangs can’t participate. They were banned for academic fraud. And it looks like deservedly so.
FiveThirtyEight determined the best teams to be prohibited from participating in the tournament since the field expanded to 64 schools in 1985. By their math, SMU is tied with Louisville (also banned this year, though their punishment was self-imposed) as the second-best ineligible team during that period. They trail only 1992 UNLV:
Rick Pitino and Larry Brown can punch weight with the towel-chomping Jerry Tarkanian, but in terms of record, efficiency and roster, the ’92 Rebels were probably the best of the three.
Still, it’s a relatively close contest. And let’s emphasize again that two of the top three banned squads in recent memory both hail from the 2015-16 season. In what seems destined to be a wide-open NCAA field this year, the Mustangs and Cardinals could have seized upon that opportunity and produced deep tournament runs. But by running afoul of the NCAA, they’re here instead, hypothetically runnin’ with the ’92 Rebels rather than taking the court against present-day teams in the real-life tourney.
Does knowing that makes the situation better or worse, Pony fans? How far do you reckon they could have gotten?
Meanwhile SMU grad Billy Nayden writes on a college sports website that I confess I’d never heard of until today, about the impact that departing seniors Nic Moore and Markus Kennedy had in raising the profile of Mustangs basketball:
While the impact on the court was massive, the impact off it was even bigger. Moore and Kennedy became true celebrities on campus, welcomed with open arms by nearly every student, alumnus and fan en route to becoming perhaps the two most visible athletes at SMU since the days of Craig James and Eric Dickerson.
No amount of NCAA bureaucracy can take away the special bond that the SMU community has with these two players.
However, perhaps the most telling saga of Moore and Kennedy is how they stuck through this season. Knowing they had no postseason to play for, neither player attempted to transfer. Instead they stayed loyal to their teammates, coach Larry Brown, and the SMU program. They fought each and every game, securing victories at all costs, despite the fact that the media narrative surrounding them highlighted how little they had to play for.
Shucks, now I feel bad for SMU again. The players, at least.
