Clearly, it has not been a banner year on the local men’s basketball circuit. Maryland has been a choppy, up-and-down ride for three months. UMBC, Towson, Loyola and Coppin have all been disappointing during the regular season, to say the least. And Morgan State, again the best team in their conference, has been the most consistent squad since November, even managing to slay the giants from College Park along the way.

But, in the world of March Madness and conference tournaments, it’s these last-gasp few days of “Tournament Week” that decide the true “success” of a men’s basketball teams’ season. Towson and Coppin went on little runs but came up short. The Terps have won a pair of games in the last 48 hours to now have a legitimate hope that they’ll be dancing on Thursday or Friday.

With just more than 24 hours remaining before the NCAA committee fills out the only brackets that matter, our state and region still has three chances to “dance.”

UMBC starts things at 11 a.m. this morning with a tall task of going to a nutty gym in Binghamton, N.Y. to slay the No. 1 team in America East on ESPN2.

As you all know, at 3:30 p.m. Maryland will try one more time to make Duke puke on a “neutral” floor in Atlanta, where even the UNC fans near center court will be pro-Terp for the first time in a long time. Do they need to beat Duke to get into the dance? Only time will tell…

And tonight at 7, top-seeeded Morgan State will play Norfolk State in the MEAC championship.

It’s a great day for local college basketball and despite a rather dreary regular season, be thankful for this day of local hoops fun and root hard for the local teams.

It always makes filling out the Monday brackets a little more fun.

Hope you join our March Hoops Madness brackets on Monday for a chance to win $100 million, the largest opportunity we’ve ever presented to the WNST audience. Hope to see you at Magerks in Federal Hill for the “Puke on Duke” party with $2 Miller Lite bottles, great sushi and good cheer.