It's mini-March Madness, only in November

Gather round. It’s Feast Week: When college basketball and holiday branding collide in a breathtaking fireworks show of national championship contenders facing off in gyms barely fit for a church league game.

If you’re the type of person who will watch March Madness, but doesn’t give a damn about the regular season, give this a try. It’s the best week of the season until seemingly every mid-major conference championship is decided by a half-court buzzer beater.

These are like the college basketball tournaments you know and love, but with an added wrinkle: Losers’ brackets! Just seeing those words is making me nostalgic for my high school wrestling days. Every team gets three games, no matter what. Winners play winners. Losers play losers. And then at the end, there’s a definitive finish for every team, first place through eighth.

Watch if for no other reason than it’ll be good practice for your March Madness office pool. Is filling out a bracket the type of thing that one can improve at by practicing? No, but whatever.

Just as I will be right before March Madness, I’m feeling irrationally confident about my ability to predict these games, which is why I can say that these are the 100% accurate results of every Feast Week tournament game. Unless, of course, they are not...

This is easily the best field of them all, with five of the top 11 in the AP rankings. This includes No. 1 Kansas, who faces off against hosts, Division II Chaminade, in the first round. This will be the fifth time that Kansas has played Chaminade in this tournament, which feels like bullying. Kansas eases into the semis.

Tennessee plays Syracuse in the tournament’s opener. Teams playing against Syracuse in tournaments have a knack for being blindsided by their zone defense, even though that’s all they ever play. But it’s not March yet, so Tennessee Moves on.

Gonzaga finds themselves in the unfamiliar position of being the fifth highest-ranked team in an eight-team field. While they have impressive front-court depth and 6’10” freshman Braden Huff has put up 21 points per game, it’s been against Yale and Eastern Oregon. Not enough to contend with Zach Edey, so Purdue advances. Ending the first round is UCLA vs Marquette. UCLA has a lot of unfamiliar faces with Jaime Jaquez and Tyger Campbell gone. I’ll take the much more experienced Marquette side.

Tennessee plays Purdue in the first semifinal. Tennessee has a reputation for being the most physical (technical foul-y) team in the country, and images of last year’s loss to Fairleigh Dickinson in the NCAA tournament make me believe that Edey can be rattled. Tennessee to the final. In the other semifinal is Kansas vs No. 4 Marquette, a true clash of styles with Kansas’ size and Marquette’s guard play. Kam Jones and Tyler Kolek are a combined 51.8% on three-pointers and they will stay hot. Marquette to the final. Gonzaga defeats Syracuse in the consolation bracket because Syracuse sucks. UCLA defeats Division II Chaminade because they are in fact a Division II team.

Syracuse defeats Chaminade in a tight one to claim 7th place, which the March Madness selection committee will later use to justify giving Syracuse an 11th seed. Gonzaga defeats UCLA in what I’m contractually obligated to tell you was the matchup in that one Final Four game. In the third-place game, Edey will face a familiar foe in Hunter Dickinson, though in a different jersey. Kansas takes advantage of the fact that the rest of Purdue’s roster is basically an NIT-level team and claims third. And in the final, Tennessee will forget that they need to score the ball and won’t be able to keep up with Marquette, the 2023 Maui Jim Maui Invitational champions.

Final standings:

Marquette

Tennessee

Kansas

Purdue

Gonzaga

UCLA

Syracuse

Chaminade

This is the coolest tournament of them all, not just because the name has the number “4” instead of spelling out the word “for,” but because it’s played in a ballroom at a resort.

North Carolina opens against Northern Iowa, who have already lost to North Texas. This should be an easy one for UNC. Texas Tech was the second-worst team in the Big 12 last season, but that was probably the single toughest conference in decades. They finished 63rd in last year’s KenPom rankings, among a smattering of the last at-large March Madness bids. Villanova just hasn’t looked the same since Jay Wright retired, and they’ve already lost to UPenn. Texas Tech advances.

Despite Penny Hardaway’s propensity to recruit one-and-done types, this is actually a very experienced team. He went to the transfer portal and their top six scorers are all seniors. Several of them are fifth-year seniors, and then there’s Alabama transfer Jahvon Quinerly, whose college career predates the three-point line. I’ll take them over Michigan. And in the last first-round game, Arkansas beats a Stanford team that’s largely the same as last year’s that went 14-19.

In the first semifinal, North Carolina will defeat Texas Tech while Armando Bacot shows off the skills that make NBA scouts say “go back to school.” Arkansas is talented, but they did just lose to UNC Greensboro, whereas Memphis did not. Memphis advances to the final. Michigan just lost to Long Beach State, but luckily, they’re only playing Stanford. Villanova also gets back on track vs Northern Iowa.

Northern Iowa defeats Stanford in a battle of academic powerhouses to claim seventh place. Villanova defeats Michigan in a game I’m contractually obligated to tell you is a rematch of that one national championship game a few years ago. Arkansas defeats Texas Tech in the third-place game, showing some of why they were ranked 14th in the preseason poll. And in the final, Memphis claims victory over North Carolina, giving Quinerly the best one-day-early 25th birthday present he could ask for.

Final standings: 

Memphis

North Carolina

Arkansas

Texas Tech

Villanova

Michigan

Northern Iowa

Stanford

This tournament doesn’t have as many of the Blue Bloods as the prior two, but there’s plenty of reason to tune in. The first matchup is between Penn State and Texas A&M in a rematch of the first round of last season’s March Madness. As my alma mater, Penn State is the team I know the most about. This is a much different (worse) team than the one that smoked A&M last year. Unfortunately, A&M and their weird male cheerleaders who wear all white will take this one.

Next is one of last year’s Final Four in Florida Atlantic taking on Butler. FAU is largely the same as last year’s team, but it’s interesting to look at ESPN’s BPI (which is the least consequential metric ever created) and see that it has them at just about 50-50 with Butler to win this game. It’ll be interesting to see whether they are really elite. I think they’re at least good enough to beat Butler. Iowa State faces VCU in the first round, with their leading scorer so far being highly recruited freshman, Milan Momcilovic. VCU just hasn’t looked impressive so far, dropping their first game of the year to McNeese, so Iowa State advances. And the last game of the first round is Boise State vs Virginia Tech. Boise State made the tournament last year while Virginia Tech did not, but I’m still taking VT. Their season last year was derailed by an insane run of close losses that makes me think they were much better than their record suggested.

Florida Atlantic passes their first real test of the year by defeating Texas A&M, and Buzz Williams cries about how his team doesn’t get to participate in the greatest Thanksgiving week tournament final in the world. Virginia Tech’s Hunter Cattoor has been going crazy in tournament games for four years now, so they advance past the younger Iowa State. In the losers’ bracket, Penn State bests Butler in a battle of two teams with a ridiculous amount of transfers. Then VCU defeats Boise State just because they’re due.

Florida Atlantic defeats Virginia Tech in the final, proving that they are in fact still good. Texas A&M claims third place from Iowa State. New Penn State coach Mike Rhoades faces his former team for the greatest prize of them all, fifth place in the ESPN Events Invitational. He left VCU this offseason and took two players with him. I’m going to assume there was a reason those two in particular transferred to a high-major program and they’ll show it in this game. Boise State will defeat Butler for seventh place because I just don’t think Butler is that good.

Final standings:

Florida Atlantic

Virginia Tech

Texas A&M

Iowa State

Penn State

VCU

Boise State

Butler