Dishin & Swishin 3/20/14 Podcast: It’s March Madness! The Roundtable looks at the NCAA tournament

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With apologies to Christmas and when kids return to school, thisis the most wonderful time of the year! March Madness! Let the games begin as 64 teams gather in sites around the country to fight for the right to call themselves national champions. For some, just making the tournament defined their season as a success. For others, if they do not make it to Nashville for the Final Four, it will be a disappointment. Will there be a Cinderella or has the clock struck midnight already for all but undefeated Connecticut and Notre Dame? We will find out beginning Saturday, but we are ready to help you understand the stories, look at the teams, and fill out your brackets.

On today’s Dishin & Swishin podcast, we bring together some of the very best of the best experts on women’s basketball. Today’s roundtable, moderated by Dishin & Swishin host David Siegel includes:

• Doug Feinberg, Associated Press national women’s basketball writer
• Mechelle Voepel, ESPN women’s basketball writer
• LaChina Robinson, women’s basketball television analyst
• Brenda VanLangen, women’s basketball television analyst

Topics discussed by the roundtable include:

• Each region’s favorites and upstarts, who can advance and who should advance.
• Did the top seeds earn their rankings and does it have an impact on the tournament?
• Players to look out for, the ones you know and a few you should know.
• What each panel member is looking forward to in the tournament, and what they are looking forward to seeing.

Since you are getting ready to fill out your brackets, here are a few tidbits that will help you narrow your selections:

• Since the tournament began in 1982, 13 teams have entered number one and have left the champion. Six times that team has been Connecticut.
• Every year of the tournament, at least one number one seed has made the final four, but only twice have all four made it to the final four (1989, 2012)
• Many know Harvard is the only sixteen seed to win a game in a tournament, but zero fourteen and fifteen seeds have won games (so you can cross 12 teams of your bracket right away).
• Only once, Stanford in 1992, has a team won the championship in their home state (sorry Tennessee).
• If you are hoping for a Tennessee-South Carolina final, only five times have the championship games been between teams in the same conference (SEC 189,1996; ACC 2006, Big East 2009,2013).
• And, finally, the stat everyone knows and many are hoping to see, there has never been a matchup between two undefeated teams in the NCAA championship.

Will this be the year two undefeated teams play for the title? To many it seems a forgone conclusion we will see UConn and Notre Dame in the finals. Maybe we will.

Of curse a lot of those people thought Baylor would beat Louisville last year, didn’t they?

Enjoy the podcast, and embrace the Madness!