The soul of college basketball – and the madness of March – is alive and well in the mid-majors

The NCAA tournament might be college basketball’s most high-profile showcase of the desperate, win-or-go-home style of basketball that makes March one of the most special times of the year.

The NCAA tournament might be college basketball’s most high-profile showcase of the desperate, win-or-go-home style of basketball that makes March one of the most special times of the year. But before those games, before millions of people fill out their brackets and start putting their faith in schools they’ve never heard of, potential Cinderella stories battle for their basketball lives. In front of loud crowds in small gyms, the madness is already spreading – and the soul of college basketball is wonderfully, mercifully, alive. Take, for instance, the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) tournament, contested over the last few days in Washington, DC’s CareFirst Arena – the 4,200-seat arena in southeast Washington that is sort of the little cousin to Capital One Arena in Chinatown where the NBA’s Wizards and NHL’s Capitals play. The CAA is expected to send just one men’s team to The Big Dance that tips off next week, the champion of the conference tournament that earns an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. That means after all these games, after all these months of ball, a tournament berth came down to how a team played on one long weekend in the nation’s capital. What that led to is some of the most frenzied basketball in the college game, the kind of hoops that can only come from players who aren’t sure they’ll ever get to dribble a ball competitively ever again if they lose.