I wrote—albeit briefly—about my love of the NCAA Vault late last season. For the uninitiated, the NCAA Vault contains every NCAA Tournament game from the Sweet 16 on played since 2000. That is 165 games in all. That is, in fact, too much for you to rationally sort through to figure out which games are worth skipping to the end, which games are worth perusing, and which merit full-blown opening-tip-to-final-buzzer immersion.
That’s why I’m here.
As part of our comprehensive college basketball preview over the next few days, I’ll be breaking down the contents of the NCAA Vault (and March Madness On Demand, which houses all 64 games from last season’s epic Tournament). Whether you’re in the mood to see a great individual performance, a team operating on all cylinders, or the moments when an eventual champion came closest to elimination, I’ve got you covered.
Sounds like gooooood watchin’.
Great Individual Performances
There are few things as exhilarating as watching a precocious athlete come of age on a national stage, as seeing potential fulfilled and yet promised again, at a higher level, simultaneously. It should come as no surprise that the five best individual performances in the NCAA Tournament since 2000 all came from college basketball superstars; there are no surprises on this list. For all of them, these performances were less breakthroughs than they were confirmations of what we thought they could be, occurring at the most opportune moments. It is performances like these that help make the NCAA Tournament the best sporting event in the world.
