ROBERT MORRIS MEN’S BASKETBALL | PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERT MORRIS ATHLETICS

What’s still so magical about March Madness collided with Basketball Armageddon this week in advance of the Sweet 16.

And they intersected close to home.

Robert Morris, fresh from an inspiring almost-upset of Alabama last Friday, has since watched a parade of its players enter the transfer portal, including Horizon League Defensive Player of the Year Amarion Dickerson and Horizon League Player of the Year Alvaro Folgueiras.

Back to the drawing board, Colonials.

At least RMU still has a board on which to draw.

Saint Francis University in Loretto, PA., in the aftermath of the school’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1991 — a heartfelt, last-second loss to Alabama State in an exhilarating First Four matchup — has announced its intention to reclassify from NCAA Division I to Division III status. Saint Francis’ Board of Trustees Chairman, the Very Rev. Joseph Lehman, explained the decision in a statement: “The governance associated with intercollegiate athletics has always been complicated and is only growing in complexity based on realities like the transfer portal, pay-for-play, and other shifts that move athletics away from love of the game.”

And so it goes.

The NCAA Tournament’s first four days and the subsequent fallout included, among other things, some fantastic finishes and some heavyweight matchups, but also:

• McNeese State head coach Will Wade reportedly being identified as the next coach at North Carolina. State in advance of McNeese State’s first-round upset of Clemson (Wade officially took over at his new destination in the immediate aftermath of McNeese State’s second-round loss to Purdue).
• Colorado State head coach Niko Medved reportedly being identified as the new coach at his alma mater, Minnesota, a day after Colorado State’s second-round loss to Maryland (another negotiation that apparently didn’t take very long).
• Maryland freshman Derik Queen, who hit a miraculous buzzer-beater to send CSU packing on a play on which he may well have traveled, explaining in a postgame media session the Terps pay attention to their head coach, Kevin Willard, first because “he did pay us the money.”
• Kevin Willard, meanwhile, was linked to the vacancy at Villanova before Maryland took on Florida in the Sweet 16, inspiring the following headline from the New York Post: “Kevin Willard Villanova rumors have hijacked Maryland’s March Madness.”
• Michigan’s Justin Pippen reportedly deciding to enter the transfer portal and Michigan reportedly reaching out to transfer portal entrant Jalen Jackson, formerly of Purdue Ft. Wayne, all in advance of Michigan’s Sweet 16 matchup with Auburn.
• And, the emergence of a Sweet 16 that consisted entirely of representatives from just four conferences (seven from the SEC, four from the Big Ten, four from the Big XII and one from the ACC).

This, I’m guessing, is not what Billy Packer and Al McGuire ever had in mind back in the day.

Dick Vitale, meanwhile, left no doubt the current state of the game is far from “awesome, baby,” on a recent social media post:

“Isn’t [it] absurd that TRANSFER PORTAL opens during the heart of @MarchMadnessMBB? There is so much instability in college basketball yet the upper echelon from administrators r talking about messing with the one golden event MARCH MADNESS – talking about expanding. PATHETIC”.

Isn’t absurd that TRANSFER PORTAL opens during the heart of @MarchMadnessMBB ? There is so much instability in college basketball yet the upper echelon from administrators r talking about messing with the one golden event MARCH MADNESS – talking about expanding. PATHETIC

— Dick Vitale (@DickieV) March 24, 2025

Couldn’t agree more.

But I’m not turning it off.

For all that’s wrong with the state of the game (it’s as incomprehensible as it is unrecognizable right about now), we still get St. John’s-Arkansas and UConn-Florida.

We still get Duke and Kentucky and John Calipari and Tom Izzo.

Cinderella may no longer be invited to the ball, but the games remain captivating and the event remains compelling.

I wish it didn’t have to be this way.

What time’s tipoff?