Of all the things that could distinguish the four teams remaining in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament — record, size, talent, experience — one factor may be undervalued: penmanship.
In the locker room, coaches still rely on their handwriting to relay halftime adjustments on whiteboards that look as if they were appropriated from a seventh-grade classroom. The same is true on the bench, where, in courtside huddles, players try to keep up with frantic scribbles — the X’s and O’s that often result in blank stares.
Even for college basketball’s most innovative minds, the only instrument with which to confer their strategic visions on the court is a felt-tipped pen, usually tethered by a string.