The Bluegrass State could be on its way to becoming the basketball version of Alabama.

The football championship hasn’t left the state of Alabama four years, with the Crimson Tide winning the BCS in 2009, 2011 and 2012 and Auburn winning in 2010.

The Sweet 16 will feature either Ole Miss or La Salle.

Let that sink in a bit. Ole Miss and La Salle have been also-rans in their leagues for roughly a decade, and now one of them will reach the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

Just to be clear, the fact that Ole Miss is a No. 12 seed and La Salle is a No. 13 is probably the least strange part about this round of 32 matchup:

Even since his first season as a college head coach at UMass, John Calipari has thrived with freshmen. That season in 1988-89, Calipari had a rookie Jim McCoy, who averaged 19.8 points per game.

That freshman and that team didn’t resemble the recruiting empire Calipari built at Memphis and Kentucky where a glut of talented freshmen sign with Cal, win a ton of college games in one year and then go on to be NBA Draft picks.

March Madness is just getting started as the college basketball season shifts to the conference tournaments. Titles will be won, NCAA Tournament spots will be clinched or lost all over the country. Here’s what to watch in the Atlantic 10.

Now that the calendar has turned to March, fans of bubble teams may be refreshing web sites of their favorite bracketologists.

The most important number of the college basketball weekend was five. As in five teams to clinch NCAA Tournament bids.

Finishing the season on the NCAA Tournament bubble is a tight-rope walk to start. In addition to a handful of teams looking to build their NCAA Tournament resumes, bubble teams must also keep an eye on conference tournaments starting this week.

Bid Thieves are everywhere.

Welcome to March.

College basketball’s best month has arrived, and, boy, did it deliver immediate dividends.

Now that the calendar has turned to March, fans of bubble teams may be refreshing web sites of their favorite bracketologists.

As college basketball’s regular season and conference tournament season nears a close, Athlon Sports will keep you up to date on the key developments through the week. Each day brings key developments for the NCAA Tournament, so in this space, we’ll update which teams look to be in the field, which might be playing themselves out as well as the key games of the day.

For most of the season, the college basketball power rankings have been fairly consistent at the top: Two or three teams from the Big Ten, a team or two from the state of Florida, maybe Duke and/or Kansas every now and then.

Some of those trends remained true this week with Indiana and Michigan taking the top two spots and Miami sitting at No. 5. But the top four has a few newcomers.