The madness is about to begin.
The men’s NCAA Tournament will kick off with First Four games on Tuesday. Then it’s off to the races with first-round games set to begin Thursday.
Auburn, Florida, Duke, and Houston have emerged as No. 1 seeds, while 14 of the SEC’s 16 teams received a bid to this year’s tournament — a new NCAA record. With a recent injury to ACC Player of the Year Cooper Flagg, a surprise loss for Auburn in the SEC championship, and back-to-back champion UConn looking less dominant than in previous seasons, this year’s tournament is set up to be fun.
Prepare for it by reading about some New England connections on this year’s men’s tournament teams.
EAST
No. 1 Duke (31-3)
It’s no surprise to many that Duke is headed into this year’s tournament in the No. 1 seed in the East. The Blue Devils have blown through opponents all season long, and even knocked off No. 1 overall seed Auburn, 84-78, back in December.
Stud freshman Cooper Flagg (Newport, Maine) is projected to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, has averaged 18.9 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 4.1 assists over the course of Duke’s season.
Flagg attended Nokomis Regional High School before transferring to Montverde Academy and is currently in the race for national player of the year. If he wins, he would be the first freshman to do so since Zion Williamson. Flagg suffered an ankle injury in the ACC tournament, but he's expected back for Friday's first-round game.
No. 14 Montana (25-9)
Montana has not gotten past the first round of the NCAA Tournament since 2006. But if there’s a right time to do so, this season just might be it.
The Grizzlies are coming off a Big Sky championship win over Northern Colorado, and are set to face Wisconsin in the opening round of the national tournament.
Joe Pridgen (Winchendon, Mass.) was a standout at Winchendon School and Governor's Academy and is a senior guard for the Grizzlies. The former Northeastern and Holy Cross guard has averaged more than 11 points, nearly seven rebounds, and shot 63.6 percent from the floor this season. He scored 17 points in Montana’s recent win over Northern Colorado, while putting up a 7-for-11 performance from the field. Earlier this season, Pridgen scored 21 points in a stretch of three out of four games, shooting a combined 29-for-41 from the field in that stretch.
SOUTH
No. 1 Auburn (28-5)
Auburn heads into the tournament with a No. 1 seed despite losing by five in the SEC championship. The ranking makes sense regardless of the loss, as the Tigers finished the season with just five losses while grappling with one of the most difficult schedules in the country.
The Tigers worked their way to a 14-game winning streak in the middle of the season led by head coach Bruce Pearl, who's a New England native. Pearl was born in Boston and attended Sharon High School before earning his undergraduate degree from Boston College, where he was a student manager of the basketball team before graduating in 1982. He went on to coach at Stanford, Iowa, Southern Indiana, Milwaukee, and Tennessee before landing at Auburn, where he has been since 2014.
No. 5 Michigan (25-9)
In head coach Dusty May's first season, the Wolverines are making their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2022. They're led by 7-foot center Danny Wolf, who played two seasons at Yale before transferring to Michigan this season. Wolf was a standout at Northfield Mount Hermon, where he led the Hoggers to a 33-6 record and helped them advance to both championship games of the NEPSAC Class AAA playoffs and national prep championship. Wolf has started all 34 games for Michigan, where's averaging 13.1 points and 9.8 rebounds per game heading into their first-round matchup with No. 12 seed UC San Diego.
No. 10 New Mexico (26-7)
Richard Pitino, son of Rick Pitino, took over as head coach of New Mexico after being fired from his head coaching job at Minnesota, and has now led the Lobos to consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.
A graduate of Providence, where he was a student manager for the Friars, the Boston native was an assistant at St. Andrew's for two seasons before he briefly served as an assistant coach at Northeastern in 2005-06. He has since landed head coaching jobs at Florida International University and Minnesota before going to New Mexico.
Pitino’s Lobos lost in the Mountain West conference tournament by three points to Boise State and will face Marquette in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on March 21.
No. 13 Yale (22-7)
Yale was recently crowned the Ivy League champion for the fourth time in six years, beating Cornell 90-84 and earning itself an NCAA Tournament bid. Senior guard John Poulakidas leads the Bulldogs in scoring this season, averaging 19 points per game. He recorded 25 points in Yale’s conference championship win, sinking five of his nine attempts from behind the arc.
Yale boasts several New England natives on its roster. Junior forward Casey Simmons (Milton, Mass.) is a former standout at Milton Academy. He averages nearly nine points and five rebounds for the Bulldogs to go along with 54 percent shooting from the floor this season. He put up 13 points in Yale’s conference championship win and 11 points in the Bulldogs’ first-round win over Princeton.
First-year guard Riley Fox (West Hartford, Conn.) has posted double-digits twice this season for Yale. During his time at Conard High School, he was a three-time All-State selection and won the 2024 Connecticut Coaches Player of the Year.
Sophomore guard Trevor Mullin (Wellesley, Mass.) — a former standout at St. Sebastian's, where he won NEPSAC Class A Player of the Year and was a two-time ISL MVP — has been a strong role player for the Bulldogs. He scored eight points in their Ivy tournament championship win over Cornell. Senior forward Jack Molloy (Greenwich, Conn.) has played in 28 games off the bench. He graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon before spending a post-graduate year at Hotchkiss.
No. 15 Bryant (23-11)
The Bulldogs are making their second NCAA Tournament appearance in four years, but first under second-year head coach Phil Martelli, Jr., who led them to the America East regular-season title and then the tournament championship with a 79-59 victory over Maine on Saturday.
Junior Barry Evans was a key member of Putnam Science's national prep championship team in 2022, and he's one of Bryant's best player. The 6-foot-8 forward has started 32 games for the Bulldogs, and he's their third-leading scorer at 13.5 points per game. He gives them needed size in a tough first-round matchup against No. 2 seed Michigan State.
WEST
No. 2 St. John’s (30-4)
Just one year after missing the NCAA Tournament and being denied an NIT bid in Rick Pitino’s first season coaching at St. John’s, the Red Storm has managed to defy expectations and completely turn things around in his second season with the program.
St. John’s blew out Creighton for a Big East Tournament title, the perfect capstone to a season during which it lost just two games in conference.
Pitino played point guard at UMass from 1971-1974. He returned to the Boston area in 1978 and served as head coach at Boston University for five years, a time during which he led the program to its first NCAA Tournament appearance in 24 years.
After stints with the New York Knicks, and at Providence and Kentucky, Pitino returned to Boston to coach the Celtics from 1997-2001 before ultimately resigning and returning to the college basketball scene.
The Red Storm are led by star guard Kadary Richmond, a former Brewster Academy and Team New England standout who is averaging 12.7 points and 5.4 assists per game this season.
No. 8 UConn (23-10)
The Huskies went into this season as back-to-back national champions, searching for a three-peat under head coach Dan Hurley. But they've taken a step back; UConn lost in the second round of the Big East tournament, 72-61, to Creighton.
UConn still heads into the tournament as an eight-seed, however, looking to make some noise despite some disappointing regular-season performances.
Sophomore guard Solo Ball — a former standout at Brewster Academy, where he earned All-NEPSAC honors as a senior — leads UConn in scoring, averaging about 14.6 points per game. Fifth-year guard Hassan Diarra — who starred at Putnam Science Academy, where he led the Mustangs to back-to-back national prep championships — has also made his presence known on both sides of the ball, as he leads the team in both assists and steals.
Star junior Alex Karaban (Southborough, Mass.) played two prep seasons at New Hampton, where he was the 2020-21 Gatorade Player of the Year in New Hampshire. The 6-foot-8 forward has proven himself as a reliable shooting option for the Huskies over the past few years, shooting about 38 percent from behind the arc over the course of his career. He’s been slightly less efficient from long-range this season, but has still sunk three or more 3-pointers in 14 games this season, shooting them at a 35.7 percent clip. Karaban has also scored double-digits in all but eight games so far this season while starting every game for the Huskies.
No. 9 Oklahoma (20-13)
Oklahoma’s 20-13 record is slightly deceiving in a way, as all of its losses came to NCAA Tournament-bound programs. Being forced to play Alabama, Texas A&M, Georgia, and Texas all in the span of 11 days forced the Sooners into four consecutive losses back in early January.
The Sooners suffered a second-round exit in the SEC tournament, losing to Kentucky by a single point after knocking off Georgia in the opening round.
Sixth-year guard Brycen Goodine (New Bedford, Mass.), a graduate of St. Andrew’s, has put double digits on the board seven times for the Sooners this season. He erupted for a 34-point game against Texas A&M on Jan. 8, and scored 24 points against Texas A&M once again 20 days later. Goodine’s team-leading 14 points against Texas helped the Sooners to a 76-72 win over the Longhorns in their regular-season finale.
No. 10 Arkansas (20-13)
After 15 years coaching at Kentucky, John Calipari became head coach of Arkansas before the start of this season.
Although seeing Calipari in any color other than the Kentucky blue is still a little off putting, he has fit right in at Arkansas, as he leads the Razorbacks to the NCAA Tournament in his first year with the program.
Calipari’s first head coaching job came at UMass, where he coached from 1988-1996. He took over a program that was coming off of 10 consecutive losing seasons, and which had not been to the NCAA Tournament in more than 20 years.
Under Calipari’s leadership, the Minutemen won the Atlantic 10 title and went to the NCAA Tournament for five straight seasons.
He was named Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year three times, and awarded with the Basketball Times and NABC Coach of the Year award in 1996, when he took his team to the Final Four for the only time in program history.
MIDWEST
No. 4 Purdue (22-11)
The Boilermakers are making their fifth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance under head coach Matt Painter, who led them to the national championship game last season.
Purdue has great guard play led by Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer, but freshman C.J. Cox (Lexington, Mass.) has made an instant impact in his first season. Cox — a former star at Milton Academy, where he was an ISL and NEPSAC champion — has started the last 20 games for the Boilermakers. He erupted for 23 points in a Jan. 12 win over Nebraska, and has provided his typically strong defense all winter.
