The basketball world has been on fire recently.

LeBron James is now second all-time in points scored. Kyle Lofton redeemed himself and sent St. Bonaventure to the NIT Final Four.

And St. Peter’s University, a No. 15 seed out of the one-bid Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, is in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.

St. Peter’s, a private Jesuit school in Jersey City, N.J. has a student body of around 3,400. The school’s endowment is $37 million. The school’s athletic budget is reportedly $1.6 million. Not the men’s basketball team, mind you — the entire athletic department.

Who was the Peacocks’ first-round opponent?

The Kentucky Wildcats, one of the blue bloods of college basketball and a school with multiple national championships. UK’s athletic budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year, a year where budgets were dampened by Covid, was nearly $150 million.

John Calipari was paid $8.5 million to be the men’s basketball coach for Kentucky this season. Put another way, Calipari was paid more than five times the entire athletic budget of St. Peter’s.

Of course, that didn’t stop the Peacocks from hitting 52.9% on 3-pointers. Nor did it help when the Wildcats went just 65.7% from the charity stripe and 4-of-15 from deep.

The Peacocks were the tenth No. 15 seed to upset a No. 2 seed — ever. And, two days later, the squad showed its performance was no fluke, beating a ranked Murray State team by 10 (70-60).

The Peacocks once again demonstrated why March Madness is so beautiful — chaos.

A No. 15 seed upset a No. 2 seed that happened to be one of the four blue bloods that dominate the sport of men’s college ball. The players on Kentucky’s roster are headed towards the NBA and G League. Even Murray State, a seven seed, has some prospects. Not to mention it produced Ja Morant, who is powering the Memphis Grizzlies to the No. 2 seed in the NBA’s Western Conference.

St. Peter’s didn’t seem to care.

Reporters peppered the team and St. Peter’s head coach, Shaheen Holloway, with questions about their opponents’ physicality, size and athleticism. If there was any fear about going up against such highly touted players and prospects.

“I got kids from New York City and New Jersey, you think they were ever scared?” responded Holloway to reporters after the game, in an answer that will forever immortalize him in the Garden State. “Don’t matter the size when you have tough, hard nose kids.”

BUT IT WASN’T just the men’s bracket the featured chaos. While the women’s tournament has a reputation for being upset-averse until the Elite 8, this season took quite a different turn.

No. 2 Baylor made it to the Elite 8 last season before losing to No. 1 UConn by two points. This season, Baylor didn’t make it out of the second round, falling to No. 10 South Dakota by 14.

Iowa, another No. 2 seed, and despite having Big 10 Player of the Year Caitlin Clark, failed to make it out of the second round as well. Last year’s national runner-up and a four seed this year, Arizona, lost by 18 to North Carolina.

And in a continuing theme of New Jersey schools putting the smackdown on both the state and University of Kentucky, No. 11 Princeton defeated No. 6 UK in the first round of the tournament.

There are still plenty of powerhouses left — No. 1 seeds Louisville, Stanford, NC State and South Carolina seem destined for the Elite 8, if not the Final Four. But the path is as treacherous as any year in recent memory.

Blue bloods UConn and Tennessee are waiting in the wings. Maryland, Ohio State, Texas and Michigan all have serious depth and power. Should be fun.

THE BIG 10, or B1G as the conference likes to spell it, has had another interesting campaign on the men’s side of basketball.

The league is consistently viewed as one of the best collegiate basketball conferences out there. Four teams were ranked in the final AP poll and nine made it to the Big Dance, most of any conference. Yet the record of Big 10 teams in the tournament was just 9-7 and just two teams remain in the Sweet 16.

It’s a strange paradox where the Big 10 consistently places a high number of teams in the tournament, but rarely do those teams perform well once the tournament begins.

Last season, the conference again had nine bids, but did even worse.

Big 10 teams combined for an 8-9 record and only Michigan made it to the Sweet 16. To be fair, in 2019 the Big 10 did very well, with Michigan State reaching the Final Four and the conference going 13-8. Still, of the eight teams to receive bids that season, just three teams made the Sweet 16 and only two made the Elite 8.

Just look at the Atlantic 10, which received only two bids this season.

George Mason beat Maryland and UMass defeated Penn State and Rutgers. In the Big Dance, Richmond beat Iowa and Davidson lost by a point to Michigan State.

Beyond the Big 10, Dayton beat No. 4 Kansas and lowly URI (5-12, 15-16) defeated Boston College twice. St. Bonaventure defeated Colorado, Oklahoma and Virginia in the NIT.

Is the A10 better than the Big 10? Probably not, if the 28 teams played one another the Big 10 side would almost assuredly do better.

Although if those games were played in March…