A Jersey Guy: March Madness On and Off Court

March Madness has arrived.

On the court, 68 teams will start the process Tuesday night in Dayton with the play in games  which will shrink the 8 team field to 64 teams.

More about that in a moment.

For now, let's look at the annual rite of spring exorcized by athletic directors searching for instant formulas for success.

Also known as the coaching carousel.

In New England, we have a pair of Atlantic 10 schools shopping, URI and UMass. A late addition to the A10 party came on Monday when George Washington fired Jamion Christian.

At the Major level, Maryland and Louisville remain open along with LSU, Florida, Missouri and now South Carolina, which fired Frank Martin on Monday.

For UMass, which has been in a job search mode since athletic director Ryan Bamford fired Matt McCall two weeks ago, Martin may be a surprise mystery prestige hire. if they could get him.

Bamford has focused on minority candidates, but almost all of them are with teams still participating in post season basketball

  Bamford's main goal was to hire a high profile coach who could jump start a program which has been comatose for several seasons.

Martin fits that mold, having spent the past 10 years coaching the Gamecocks, including guiding them to a Final Four appearance 5 years ago. 

But in this .com era that was a different era and Martin is now available.

Stay tuned.

South Carolina's opening could draw the attention of first year Boston College head coach Earl Grant, who gained a lot of style points last week when the Eagles won a pair of ACC tournament games and were a buzzer beater basket away from reaching the semifinals.

Grant is a South Carolina native and an SEC opening is one of the crown jewels in coaching.

Again, stay tuned.

There will be much more nonsense over the next several days, but the dance is just starting

As to the Big Dance, the main theme will be No. 1 seed in West and overall Gonzaga, finally break through and win a national championship.

There are a lot of pretenders--perhaps as many as  a dozen in the field, who could emerge in New Orleans, but in looking at the bracket breakdown, we will make an Elite 8 group of squads who could emerge.

West--Gonzaga is the favorite, but No. 3 seed Texas Tech looks like the most dangerous

East--Baylor is the defending national champion and good enough to make it o the Final Four, but we think Kentucky will be right there next them.

South--Arizona is poised for a super run and should make it to San Francisco and New Orleans, but don't discount a veteran and well coached Villanova team from making a serious run.

Midwest--Kansas is good, but the Jayhawks won't get past Iowa, our favorite NCAA team.  Look for Auburn to regroup in the bottom half of that  draw. 

We'll see how the picks go before we get beyond that.

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March Madness Munchies

New Jersey has three teams in the tournament--Rutgers, Seton Hall and St. Peters for the first time since 2004....Providence had a great regular season, winning the Big East regular season title, but the Friars must beat first round opponent South Dakota State for credibility since they have been perennial first round losers.

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Wildest coaching rumors:

UConn coach Danny Hurley heading to Louisville, Notre Dame coach Mike Brey going to Maryland or LSU...Murray State coach Matt McMahon moving to an SEC job--Florida  or Missouri?