While about 80 schools are locked in to see who they'll be facing in the first weekend of March Madness — or if they did enough made the tournament at all — a number of well-known basketball schools are already heading back to the drawing board to figure out how they can get in next year.

Jerry Tarkanian had reached out to the UVM icon, who was busy preparing for Syracuse and its vaunted 2-3 zone. The matchup had the ominous potential to be the last chapter of a 19-year stint in Burlington for the good-natured, wise-cracking Brennan, who planned to follow the best team in program history out the door at season's end.