This Year's Biggest Snub in NCAA Bracket

For college basketball fans, it's a great time of year. Unless, this year, those fans happen to root for Rutgers. The NCAA unveiled its 2023 bracket for March Madness over the weekend, and Rutgers didn't make the cut among the men's teams. In the eyes of the Athletic and Yahoo Sports, that was this year's biggest snub. Some other odds and ends of note:

• Men's favorite: For the men, the four No. 1 seeds are Alabama, Houston, Kansas, and Purdue. The betting lines have Houston as the favorite to win it all, per Sportsbook. However, stats site FiveThirtyEight.com has a note of caution about that because of a key injury.
• Women's favorite: For the women, the top seeds are South Carolina, Indiana, Stanford, and Virginia Tech. The Gamecocks of South Carolina are the heavy favorites to repeat as national champs, per ESPN. The team is riding a 38-game win streak dating back to last season.

• Disappointment: The North Carolina men failed to make the tournament after a disappointing season. As CBS Sports notes, the Tar Heels are the first team to fail to qualify after entering the season as the No. 1 in the AP poll.
• Underdogs: No. 10 Penn State might be one to keep an eye on, having performed consistently well as an underdog this season, according to USA Today. No. 12 Drake also is getting attention "after rolling through the Missouri Valley Tournament," per the AP.
• Strategy: The New York Times sorts through and evaluates common advice for bracketeers. For example, the idea of trying to analyze how a team matches up against a particular opponent is "too much time and effort for too little payoff." One thing you should do: Take care filling out the tiebreaker, usually the total number of points scored in the final game. This is often a deciding factor.

(More March Madness stories.)