NCAA Tournament preview: 3/20/26

I welcome the Matthew Musings, a Michael Connell, creator of Matthew Musings, and your host.

Stay tuned for 15 minutes of science, politics, news, and opinion.

In other words, Matthew Musings.

Today's date is Friday, March 20th, 2026.

This is season 6 episode number 12 of our show.

I do have my son with me here today.

Frank, how are you?

Great.

I am glad here.

Very glad.

Looking at today's day 3, 20, 26, 6.12 for the episode.

Once again, you have a lot of ones, twos, threes, and sixes.

I've mentioned this story in many times before about how

you can add those or multiply those.

There's more to it than that.

Here we go again with those particular numbers.

They show up all the time.

Speaking of things that we're doing again, it's spring again.

And we're talking about Kyle's basketball again.

Now you know, today is officially the first day of spring.

You do know that now.

It's March 20th.

Guys, I do know that.

I believe I have mentioned this before that when I was a kid, they always told you,

like, oh, spring starts on March 21st.

It was always the 21st.

Summer starts in June 21st, autumn starts on September 21st, like that.

But now, the scientists are able to figure it out like to the exact minute of when these

things start.

And this year, it's actually today, if you're listening to this on March 20th, that spring

starts today.

Now, depending on what time you're listening to this, maybe spring has already sprung.

Here is your first trivia question.

Do you know what time spring starts today?

No.

I'll give you a hint.

I think you and I are probably listening to this episode still in winter because spring

doesn't start until 10.46 am.

Listeners, if you are hearing this after 10.46 am, it's spring.

And if you're listening to this year's from now, I do mean spring of 2026.

It'll be like a middle of winter.

It's like, oh, it's spring.

I'm going to listen to this in future winters.

That's a good point.

Imagining, oh, yes, it was one spring, you know, 30 years from now, we may have entered

it like a new ice age or something.

And like, I can listen to this like, remember spring.

Yeah.

Not remember that one spring, remember spring.

Just remember spring.

So yeah, the new way to do this is to look at the exact minutes, the old way of doing

things in life was me talking about college basketball and that's going to be again today.

As we're recording this brackets are out like we're recording this on Sunday evening.

I haven't listened to anybody else talk about this.

I just came home, printed out the bracket and said, let's hook up the microphone.

Here we go.

I will also say that now I think it's, I don't even think it started yet, but as we're

recording this, the Oscars are tonight too, and I don't know if that had ever happened

before that like that they do selection Sunday and Oscar night on the same night.

I would talk about the Oscars, except, yeah, I think the Oscars are tonight.

I kind of gave up because I hadn't seen any of the movies like literally not a single

one.

It's true for a lot of people, it's like eventually it's just like, I don't know any of these

people.

I really don't.

Younger than I am, I don't know if people are just trying to win awards.

And I mentioned this last week, I don't think we've seen any of the tournament teams in

action this year either, unless I missed something like an opponent of a game that we saw

and like we saw him kind of accidentally, yeah, that would be the way to do it.

Anyway, looking at the NCAA tournament brackets and just like the excitement of March

man, it always reminds me of two things, your first tournament.

Now you probably don't remember your first tournament, this was 2014.

You were a few days old, so I remember how that March went.

It was, now your mother's pregnant obviously, and I think your due date at one point

that the doctor told us March 10th, another time they told us March 11th, now you came

a little bit early and your mother was worried like that there was going to be a snow storm.

And there was on, I think March 3rd, maybe there's like 10 inches of snow, but then you gave

us a couple days, yeah.

And then it snowed again like 10 inches of snow on St. Patrick's Day.

This I remember it was my first day back at work.

And yeah, like 10s of snow on the ground and the following day, that must have been a Monday,

the following day was the date and games, the first round games, it was a Tuesday,

you were about two weeks old, and we had your grandparents over to watch Call of Basketball.

I remember you're a grandpa Mike brought over a Costco pizza classic, well you didn't have

any Costco pizza.

I had Costco pizza on your behalf, and we watched some games.

You remember it.

I remember you guys talking about it.

I mentioned it every March.

Yeah, so like I remember it because all you've seen the picture of like me holding you

and like holding up the newspaper of the USA today from when the brackets came out.

Holding up the pizza slice, this is what I tried to feed Franklin and your mother's saying

to me, did you listen to nothing at those baby classes that we went to?

Like nah, not really.

I think it was a feature kid pizza as soon as they can eat it, right?

That's how that goes.

And then for me, my first tournament, 1989, that was the first final that I was.

That was Michigan, who has a number one seed this year as well, more on that later.

Michigan playing seat and hall of my dad wanted so much seat and hall of the wind.

Now that I've told this story, I'm sure to you for Anne probably on the air as well,

that I had already gone to bed that night, and I woke up not in the middle of the night,

but let's say it's like, you know, 10 or 11 o'clock at night because these things start

late.

I come out into the living room now, an important part of the story, well one that we

have only one TV, as everyone did back then, nobody has two TVs, Marty.

But we have, my mother has already gone to bed, because if she intercepted me, she would

have dissent me back to bed.

I come out and see my dad watching TV, and there's basketball going on, and he says, you

know, this is the championship game, you might as well, not just stay up and watch this

weekly game goes into overtime.

That was what hooked me as a sports fan.

They're like, this is what the cool people are doing after all the squares go to bed.

Oh, like 11 o'clock midnight, and in my head, it's like 3 o'clock in the morning, but

no, the games usually start at 9, and they're over like 11, but this one at the overtime,

so it probably was close to midnight, which was huge when you're like six, seven years old.

Yeah, which is basically 8 o'clock in the morning.

Yeah, you might as well, and then up for months, but anyway, yeah, that's what hooked me,

and my dad and many to me, they're like, well, this was the last game in season, basketball

is done.

But happened to be the first day of the Major League Baseball season as well, and then

that started me on the path that I'm still on.

The first real game you really hooked on is the last one.

It was the last one.

It was the last one.

Yeah.

It happened.

You catch something at the end.

So anyway, I followed baseball that year, and started collecting baseball cars, started

doing the math, and they figured out people's batting average and stuff, and well, that's

become my whole career.

So the reason you have a job is because of that.

Because of this, yeah, that I watched that game, and some people say, like, oh, I wrote

the book on that.

I really did write the book on that.

Anyway, speaking of, and say a term, it's by the way, here's some math where I do know

how many possible bracket iterations there are.

I do.

Okay, assuming the first four go, like, they don't count.

So two to the 63rd power, do you know that number?

I believe it's 9 quintillion.

9 quintillion.

9 quintillion, yeah.

The thing I usually say are, well, it's about, it's more than the square number of

inches of the face the earth.

So like, if you were to shoot a laser at Earth and you had it marked off one in squares,

you'd be more likely to hit a particular one in square than a perfect bracket.

Yeah.

And it's, it's not quite the number of persons on Earth squared.

I think.

It gives me a great idea for a video of like 2300, I shot the one inch square.

And you hit it.

9 quintillion.

And then it's something, it's close to this number, like, that if you take the number

of people on Earth and multiply that by the number of people on Earth, it's pretty close

to that as well.

It's like, if you had a drawing, and whoever won the drawing, it's like, okay.

Then we put their name back in the hat and we draw again in the same person wins again.

I think that one's slightly more, but it's, it's near that order.

Anyway, we got to talk about, we got about the teams here.

So number one seed, surprise, surprise.

We talked about this last time, Duke, Florida, Arizona, Michigan, the usual suspects.

The thing I'd say about Michigan is now that they've lost their conference tournament held

on to the number one seed anyway.

To me, that was somewhat surprising.

It's like the selection committee had the idea anyway, okay, Michigan's going to get

a number one seed.

I would love to see a Duke, Michigan final.

I know what happened at least once, the Chris Weber timeout game.

Oh, wait, no, no, no, that was against North Carolina.

See, this is why I should be able to edit these things.

The Duke game was the previous year when the Fab Five were freshmen and they got their

butts handed to invite people.

So we need to make up time at the end, but you need to make this like 15, 10, so they

added it out part.

Yeah, I can take that part out.

You know, the thing is I can, I can easily look up any of these stats.

However, it's more fun just to think about it for a second.

So I'm reading down the list and the East region, by the way, the where Duke is in, that

ends at Capital One Arena.

Like you, that's right down the street from us.

Every time I Google anything about the end state tournament, the first site is taken

to be our tour, StubHub and Seat Geek, Ticketmaster, like I'm going to buy tickets to these

things.

They aren't cheap, but the East region ends right down the street from us.

Whoever's going to the final four from that region is get down the street.

Yeah.

It's tempting.

It's tempting.

March 28th, 29th.

Oh, I think we're going to be, might be elsewhere at the end.

But we'll talk about that in a future episode.

I'm looking from the East.

They've got, that's Duke and Yukon.

Now it's somebody at the selection committee has a sense of humor because that one is another

famous game.

I think this was 1992 as well, the, the Latenar game that must, yeah, that sounds like 1992.

That's about right of Christian Latenar's final shot to beat Duke, to make it to a final

four.

That bracket, St. John's, a number five seed.

We talked about them last week that they had been not struggling, but they've lost a

couple of games.

They won the Big East Tournament, but still five seed.

Selection committee not giving them much love, even though they won the Big East Tournament.

Looking down at the South, there you got Houston as number two seed.

Now, that's another possible match if you got a potential Florida Houston regional

final.

It'll be a rematch of the last year if I'm remembering that correctly.

I don't know where that region ends.

I had, I had all these windows open, I've, I have too many, too many tabs open right now.

So yeah, send, send me back to, but I do want to buy tickets to these games.

Okay, so the reason, all right, oh, I hold it.

The South Regional ends in Houston.

The games are being played in Houston, and Houston could be playing.

All right, so Midwest ends in Chicago.

This is the Michigan, some Michigan playing in Big Ten territory.

I was states of two seed there.

Virginia's three.

Yeah, Virginia ended up with a three seed after making the ACC final.

They lost to Duke, but still ended strong.

We talked about them last week.

And then Arizona out west that ends in San Jose, Arizona, it's the number one seed.

They've got to produce, let's see, the Gonzaga, a school called High Point, you know where

High Point is, it's right near Kennesaw State, I think they're another one in there.

High Point?

Is it on the bottom or something?

Yeah, it's it's on the mountain somewhere, and then I'm, so, now as we talk about these

teams, I mean, 20 of these teams are already out.

The first four games, like four of those teams are out.

And then you've got, let's see, 16, yeah, 16 teams would have been out yesterday as people

are listening to this.

Now those first four games, Texas NC State, that's interesting to me because I used to live

on the campus of North Carolina State University.

You got, oh, speaking of stubs, Miami, Ohio, we talked about them last week, now we kind

of jinxed them, we said they were undefeated, they did lose a game.

And then, yeah, all the way down to an 11 seed, my goodness.

And then, all right, Prairie View and Lehigh, Lehigh coming through on the, uh, Patriot League

there.

And then, two local teams, we didn't hit this year, like we talked about the DMV 6 pack.

I left out these two schools, all right, UMBC, which is close to enough, Baltimore.

And then Howard, that's, that's DC, like again, somebody with a sense of humor at the

Tournament Selection Committee, the putting UMBC against Howard in the first round.

Well, those will be, uh, did happen already, Tuesday night and Wednesday night.

And then you'll see in the, in the main bracket, like, okay, Michigan faces off.

Against the winner of UMBC and Howard, Florida faces off against the winner of Prairie

View and Lehigh.

So those games are already set.

I would love to hear that one of the play-in teams won, I assume that Michigan is going

to be playing.

I assume.

Yeah.

Now, my final four, you trust the Selection Committee.

All right.

Out of Michigan, Florida, Duke, and Arizona.

Who are you thinking?

I don't know.

Let's go with the sentimental pick, as your grandma lives out in Tucson.

We visited there often.

Let's go with, let's go with Arizona.

They spend a minute for them.

Now, it was worth going one minute over in addition today, being the, uh, first, uh, or

well, start of the NCAA tournament.

It's also the first day of spring.

You know, I'm going to have something spring-related here.

It's, you know, it's good when it's in the big drawer.

It's in the break drawer.

Robin singing.

No.

The Robin's egg.

And I got them in the container.

It looks like a little old-school milk carton.

Here, I will put up the music.

So we hear a little going home here.

The Robin's eggs, Robin's eggs, the little minis, they're like little, little whoppers.

So there's, wait, I want to make sure you get all the colors here.

There's white, pink, yellow, and blue, these spring colors, as you get.

All right.

Yeah, the yellow and pink kind of, too.

And yeah, these are chocolatey goodness.

Why don't they tell these all here?

Yeah.

Oh, you look at the cross section.

Oh, it's good.

Genius idea somebody had.

And, uh, I appreciate you're talking basketball with me today.

We're going to watch some more basketball tonight.

And we'll do this again sometimes, too.

You've been listening to math musings.

My name is Michael Connell.

For more information to contact, go to MichaelConnellJunior.com.