March Madness
Story Stream
Is March Madness All Luck? March 26, 2025
The beauty of March Madness is that anything can happen. The horror of March Madness is that, really, anything can happen. Unlike the college-football playoffs—which are highly restrictive, and weighted toward bigger schools from powerhouse conferenc...
John Calipari and the Razor-Thin Margins of Legacy March 21, 2025
They are dressed in blue and ready for blood, thousands of them, pouring through downtown Lexington, Kentucky, on a Saturday night in February, layered, liquored up, and ready to scream. “My guess is I’m going to get booed,” John Calipari said earlie...
March Madness Is Here Again March 21, 2024
In 2021, I had an urgent message for Slate readers ahead of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament: The Gonzaga Bulldogs were on the verge of becoming the best team ever. It did not work out, as Gonzaga fell to Baylor in the national championship game....
Swiftian Normality and the Freak Right March 11, 2024
Like many normies, I have been captivated by the meteoric rise of college basketball phenom Caitlin Clark, who recently broke the all-time NCAA women’s scoring record in spectacular fashion, and will seek to lead her Iowa Hawkeyes to tournament great...
