by Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today
April 8, 2025

College basketball’s Cinderella has died, and with her, so much of the NCAA Tournament’s magic has been laid to rest. Both were victims of the out-of-control transfer portal and the almighty NIL dollar.

Another way of putting it: March Madness isn’t so mad any more.

You may like that. I do not. For me, the beauty and allure of the tournament always has been when the unthinkable happens, like two years ago when 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson shocked No. 1 seed Purdue. There was often drama, if not magic, when the monumental upset almost happened but did not, such as in 1986 when Lafayette Stribling’s Mississippi Valley State team led for most of the game before narrowly losing to overall No. 1 seed Duke.

The 2025 NCAA Tournament, one of the most predictable on record, ended Monday night with an exciting, remarkably well-played game. Florida defeated Houston 65-63. It seems appropriate that one of the Gators’ heroes was 23-year-old Mississippian, Alijah Martin, a graduate student from Summit in Pike County, who transferred to Florida after playing four seasons at Florida Atlantic. Mid-major transfers played critical roles for power programs throughout the tournament.

This Final Four consisted of all No. 1 seeds. Two No. 12 seeds won a first-round game, but there were no real stunners where a team seeded 13 or above advanced. Arkansas, a 10-seed from the SEC, was the only double-digit seed to make the Sweet 16. All the other 15 were 6-seeds or higher. 

There were no stunners. No school named Oakland beat a blue blood like Kentucky. No UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) upset Virginia. No Bucknell beat Kansas. Those ships have sailed away, perhaps forever.

This year’s biggest upset came when McNeese State defeated Clemson. And that one gets an asterisk because McNeese State reportedly out-spent many power conference schools with NIL money in the transfer portal.

“Follow the money,” longtime college and NBA coach Tim Floyd, a Hattiesburg native, says. “In college basketball today, recruiting is basically buying. For the most part, low- and mid-majors simply can’t compete financially with the power conference teams.”

Belmont University of Nashville was one of those low-to-mid major schools that might have pulled a gigantic upset in this year’s NCAA Tournament. The makings of an NCAA Sweet 16 team were there from last year’s 22-12 team. But then, power forward Malik Dia transferred to Ole Miss, point guard Jacobi Miller transferred to Maryland and small forward Cade Tyson transferred to North Carolina. Strike one, strike two and strike three: Belmont was out. Ole Miss, Maryland and North Carolina all made the NCAA Tournament; Belmont, which still somehow managed to win 22 games, did not.

Belmont was not alone. Across the land, richer teams from the power conferences cherry-picked from low-and-mid major teams, buying their best players with higher NIL packages. Stetson, a mid-major powerhouse in 2023-24, lost all five starters and all top reserves through the transfer portal. A team that won 22 games a season ago won only eight this past season.

Florida Atlantic shocked everyone by going to the Final Four in 2023, then made the NCAA Tournament again in 2024. The Owls won 60 games over those two seasons. Then, Coach Dusty May left for Michigan and nine — count ’em, nine — players, including Martin, left via the transfer portal. Cinderella no more, FAU was essentially a .500 team this past season.

Mississippian Kermit Davis has been on both sides of the NCAA power divide. He coached at Middle Tennessee State for 16 seasons before a five-year run at Ole Miss. In 2016, his Middle Tennessee team, a 15-seed out of Conference USA, shocked Tom Izzo and Michigan State 90-81 in one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history.

Davis doesn’t know if the same feat would be possible today. 

“I am not sure we could have afforded to hold that team together in today’s college basketball climate,” Davis said. “I know we couldn’t have held them together for that next season.”

What a lot of people might have forgotten is that Davis’s Blue Raiders won 31 games and beat another Big Ten team, Minnesota, in the 2017 NCAA Tournament. 

“Today, all those players would have left Middle and have been playing for Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee or somebody like that,” Davis says. “And you couldn’t blame them. There’s so much money out there. I’m not sure it’s good for college basketball overall, but it’s just the way it is.”

Floyd, who coached at Idaho and New Orleans before jobs at Iowa State and Southern Cal later in his career, strongly believes the new trend isn’t good for the NCAA Tournament or for college athletics in general. 

“It used to be that if you had a couple holes in your roster, you would go the junior college route for immediate help,” Floyd said. “Now, you just pluck then away from smaller four-year schools and leave them high and dry. It’s professional basketball without salary caps or contracts. It’s crazy as hell.”

And, at least for this one observer, it has stolen much of the madness from March.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.