Four teams. 19 combined wins. Two combined head coaches. A future DIII team.
This is March … Sadness.
Under pressure to expand the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to include more up-and-coming programs, the well-renowned and respected NCAA devised the Butter Nutter Frivolous Four, a national tournament comprising the four worst teams in the nation.
Last-place teams across the country anxiously waited in their dilapidated locker rooms Sunday for the call of nomination. Yet, it was only the best of the best — or the best of the worst — that were chosen to fly to the beautiful host city of Bakersfield, CA: the Louisville Cardinals, Georgetown Hoyas, Hartford Hawks and Cal Bears.
Louisville (4-28), representing the South, capped off its season with a historic 28th loss, which cemented the 2022-2023 Cardinals as the worst U of L — L in every sense — team in history. While the future of the program might not be described as “bright,” a returning head coach next year at least brings hope of a “dim porch light” future.
The same can’t be said about half the teams in the tournament.
Georgetown (7-25) and Cal (3-29) both dumped their coaches prior to the tournament after several years of subpar performances. Though the Hoyas’ Patrick Ewing and the Bears’ Mark Fox had very different coaching — and playing — styles, they shared one thing in common: an inability to win.
While Fox got the best of his counterpart with five conference wins last season compared to Ewing’s zero, Georgetown upped its game this year to tie the Bears at two conference wins apiece in the 2022-2023 season.
It is rumored among fans that Georgetown will now turn its sights to interim coach Allen Iverson in an attempt to recreate the famed and clearly successful dynamic of recruiting a former player and NBA star with no head coaching experience to run the program. However, a concern shared among analysts is a potential lack of practice.
Meanwhile, the Bears have hired ChatCBB as their newest coach, a chat AI developed by a second-year computer science major at UC Berkeley. Though players are raving about their new coach’s “animated” personality, there remains some resistance behind ChatCBB’s suggestion of only shooting 40 footers due to the strategy’s analytic advantages.
Finally, Hartford. The team, at 5-23, may initially seem like an interesting selection for the Frivolous Four, as its resume includes wins over college basketball blue blood such as Houghton University, FDU Florham — FD, unbelievably, stands for Fairleigh Dickinson — and Northern Vermont University – Lyndon (yes, those are real teams that Hartford played).
What makes this team really special, however, is the fact that the university is transitioning to Division III in 2025. With just two years left in Division I, the Hartford administration is reportedly trying to test how bad a DI college basketball team can be, aiming for “no more than three wins” next season.
Cal, which finished the season with the least amount of wins among the participants — a whopping three to an even more whopping seven — will take on Georgetown (with the most wins) in the first semifinal, with Louisville and Hartford taking the latter.
The winner will take home a sweet trophy and enough individually wrapped Butter Nutters to represent wins per season, courtesy of the Frivolous Four’s sponsor, Butter Nutters.
The loser will be forced to sit and watch the winning team eat all of its Butter Nutters.
The other two teams — as the organizers worried the players would feel left out — will also receive an edible prize. The middling teams will receive Oreos but without the stuffing, due to recent budget cuts within the programs.
The games will be played Monday, March 27 at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., respectively, in the hope that student spring breakers who are already flocking to Bakersfield might stop by to catch a game.
Expecting low attendance, the organizers of the tournament are giving fans extra incentives to watch the creme-de-la-creme of mediocre basketball. Fans who buy tickets will get the chance to enter a giveaway of FTX stock, courtesy of Cal football.
Though the organizers attempted to reach major recording artists to perform during a halftime show, only Ed Sheeran agreed to perform, on the condition that he sing “Shape of You” over and over again for 20 minutes.
All games will be streamed on ESPN Ocho.
This article was written for purely satirical purposes.
