2021 March Madness: 8 biggest takeaways from Championship Week
4. Robbery lives in March
Teams that had no shot of making the tournament like Georgetown and Oregon State are now winning conference tournament championships and stealing bids from teams on the bubble. A lot of good teams that didn’t win it all in conferences like the Mountain West and Conference USA are in trouble and so are some of the teams with winning records that are towards the bottom of the standings in power 5 conferences. Just when you think you’re safe, there goes an 8 seed winning a conference tournament and your bid has now been stolen.
5. Underdogs run faster in the garden
In the 10 Big East tournament games in Madison Square Garden this week, 6 of them were won by the lower seed. 11 seed Depaul knocked off 6 seed Providence and 10 seed Butler beat 7 seed Xavier in the first round. But it was the 8 seed Georgetown Hoyas that made all the noise as they took down the two top teams in Villanova and Creighton in their run to go on and win the Big East tournament.
Patrick Ewing drew headlines this week for talking about some of the staff at MSG not recognizing him even though his name is up in the rafters and he’s one of the best basketball players to ever play in that arena. His time as a player may have passed and crazy enough may have even been forgotten by some but this Hoya team made sure they weren’t going to be forgotten this week.
"I thought this was my building. ... Everybody in this building should know who the hell I am."
— The Sporting News (@sportingnews) March 11, 2021
Patrick Ewing was upset after he said he got stopped multiple times by security at Madison Square Garden. pic.twitter.com/r6DN9JITG8
If Ewing didn’t own that building already he does now. Georgetown went from the season about to be over to winning four straight games in four days to clinch the school’s 31st tournament bid (first since 2015) and 8th conference tourney championship (first since 07). This team hadn’t even won 3 games in a row all season.
The Hoyas beat Marquette by 19 in the first round, Villanova by 1 in the quarterfinal, Seton Hall by 8 in the semi, and then destroyed Creighton by a score of 73-48 in the final. Georgetown was 2-5 against these teams in the regular season splitting their games with Seton Hall and Creighton, losing two games to Villanova and losing one to Marquette.