Potential March Madness Cinderellas in the Mid Majors

With March comes madness, and within the madness, there exists chaos. This chaos is often created by teams that have been given zero chance to win games in the NCAA tournament. These teams create storylines dubbed as Cinderella stories.

With that brief explanation out of the way, let’s discuss a few teams that can create their own Cinderella story this year.

Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons

Starting off, with a team I had the opportunity to watch in person.

Purdue Fort Wayne currently sits in second in the Horizon League, obviously, in order to make the tournament they would need to win the conference to gain the automatic bid to the tournament.

What has impressed me most about Purdue Fort Wayne has been their ability to hang close to tough teams. The Mastodons have hung tight with both Penn State, Northwestern and UCF.

All of these teams have had solid seasons and only managed to beat Purdue Fort Wayne in very close matchups. With a few different bounces of the basketball they could be in a completely different situation

There is one outlier game, in a tough matchup against the Wolverines where the Mastodons struggled. But other than that Purdue Fort Wayne has played solid in conference with seven wins and two losses.

Yale Bulldogs

Looking at the record of Yale this season, this team may seem unassuming. Currently boasting an 8-6 record. But this record doesn’t tell the tale of how the Bulldogs have lost to some really tough teams. Yale played Purdue to a single-digit loss, along with a one-point loss to UTEP and a three-point loss to Minnesota.

Kenpom, a ranking system that ranks college teams using a lot of advanced metrics, has Yale ranked 80th. That is the highest mark of any Ivy League team.

Yale does need to win the Ivy League conference tournament in order to gain the automatic bid to the tournament, as they do not have a good enough resume in order to make it as an at-large bid.

Ivy League teams have pulled off upsets before, I believe that the Bulldogs could be the next team to follow that trend.

McNeese Cowboys

Hailing from the Southland conference the McNeese Cowboys could wrangle an upset in March this year.

The Cowboys haven’t lost a game by more than single digits this season, including a three-point loss to Mississippi State and an eight-point loss to Alabama, two SEC heavyweights.

McNeese currently ranks 68th in Kenpom, which puts them just out of the 64-team range that in theory would be taken to play in March. McNeese is currently undefeated within the Southland conference.

With no real threats, the Cowboys should manage to roll through the rest of their conference schedule. Winning out could even see them as a bubble team if they were to lose within the later part of the conference tournament.

McNeese would be an exciting team and story to watch as we head toward the excitement and madness that is March in the world of college basketball.

Luke Stefanisko is a first-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email ljs6415@psu.edu.