This year the Binghamton Bearcats snuck into the NCAA tournament for the first time since the classic basketball scandal of 2009-2010, when academic and character integrity of players was compromised in order to become a more competitive Division 1 team. Of course, with this year’s tournament being the first since the new NCAA policy regarding players, this truly was set to be March Madness. As much as I wanted to pick my beloved Bearcats as a 15 seed upset, the Villanova Wildcats tend to wait until the second round to crumble under pressure. And so it happened… Binghamton fell in the first round, losing 55-48. The one, two punch of Boyd Schmidt and Dwayne Watkins proved to be a very efficient combination for the suddenly slower pace of the game. With Schmidt being a freshman, and Watkins being a sophomore things are looking up. Unfortunately for us, more established programs may be pursuing our better players, especially Schmidt due to new quotas. The quotas really do make a player like Boyd Schmidt get levels of attention that he never would have seen had he been just a few years older. Realistically, the quotas are a big part of why we made the tournament this year: we were naturally more prepared than many other schools. I guess we should be thanking the NCAA, although it was clearly the latest of a series of publicity stunts to move the conversation away from compensating players. While the long term impact of the quotas are yet to be seen, Kentucky falling so early was definitely something that wouldn’t have happened under the previous system. I really hope that other sports err on the side of caution with this nonsense. I understand that statistically some groups are underrepresented in certain sports and regarding playing time, but maybe the people that make up these groups just aren’t as good as those from other groups.