NCAA tourney teams that had Cubs
The NCAA tourney’s first round begins today at 11:15 CST after the First Four wrapped up last night in Dayton with a lackluster game between Michigan and Tulsa.
Florida Gulf Coast, Wichita State, Holy Cross, and Michigan are the winners this year in the event’s short history. After watching these (and some NIT games), it got me thinking: what teams in the NCAA tourney had some current Cubs players attend their university?
Clayton Richard’s Michigan Wolverines were one of the last teams in this year’s field, and narrowly escaped a Tulsa team looking to prove its worth. A Laffayette, Indiana native, Richard played at Michigan for four seasons before being drafted by the White Sox.
North Carolina is one of the four number-one seeds this year, and are proud to say new Cub Adam Warren pitched there. He was drafted by the Yankees in 2009 after playing four seasons in Chapel Hill.
Young Cubs Kyle “The Hulk” Schwarber played at Indiana for three seasons, in which hit knocked 40 total homers. The Cubs took Schwarbs with their first pick in the 2014 draft, and boy do we know how he’s turned out so far. Indiana is a five seed in the East region with North Carolina.
Rounding out the list of Cubs on the current 40-man roster who played for a school who’s basketball team is in the NCAA tourney is Matt Szczur. Szczur attended Villanova, The Wildcats from Philadelphia on the two seed in the South region, top-seed Kansas’ region. The outfielder was drafted by the Cubs after playing two seasons at Villanova.
Surprisingly there’s only four, but it’s pretty cool to see. It’s not a thing we, baseball people, think about and compare to a different sport. I would say, “Go all of these teams!” However, Indiana loses to Kentucky in the second round, Villanova loses to Kansas in the Elite 8, Michigan loses to Notre Dame in the first round, and North Carolina loses to Kentucky in the Sweet 16.
So I’ll just root extra hard for these guys in Spring Training.
