It's that time of the year again. This season, it seems like there's a lot more parity among the field of 68 than in previous years. I'm not sure how my bracket will play out, but it's looking like the prevailing trend is picking Kansas and Michigan State to make the championship game. I definitely think the South region is difficult to pick and there is lots of potential for upsets there.
Thoughts?
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Personally I think the West is the most open/interesting. Any of the top 6 seeds could win it.
It sets up for Texas and A&M to play in the second round, if both teams win. And then for the winner of that game to likely play another rival in OU. There's also a possibility of a Texas-VCU matchup in the Sweet 16 too. You also have Duke and Oregon in there with a very dangerous Baylor squad in the other half.
The Big 12 was loaded this year and I think Kansas wins the South pretty convincingly.
FGCU looks like the best #16 seed in forever ... I wish they were playing Virginia or Oregon instead of UNC
Jayhawks. If they had Seventh Woods, unstoppable.
Man, I never understood basketball. To me it's just ten (ten, right?) guys chasing a ball around a court. Soccer's marginally better, on account of the occasional drama of some guy biting someone else. American Football might be a notch up, 'cos you can almost see the brain damage occurring in real time.
But then hey, what do I know? I like watching professional video game tournaments, for fuck's sake.
Glad you were able to work your way through that one, you started to lose credibility with me when you said Soccer was marginally better than anything.
Beat it nerd
Sorry, you'll have to pay extra if you want to watch me do that
Definitely agree that this year is very, very weird. No teams really do stand out above and beyond the rest. Really makes it hard to make picks (but that's the point, right?). This is by far the least confident I've felt in any of my picks from year to year.
As for the upset picks...I REALLY want to pick Iona...I've watched them a decent amount this year and AJ English is filthy. I would compare him to Buddy Hield, but obviously he's playing against much lesser competition. In addition, Iowa St. has failed to show up on many occasions this year. That said, English doesn't have much (any) backup behind him, and if Iowa St. half shows up they are a much better team.
As for team poised to make deeper runs, I like Purdue a lot to the Elite Eight. Part of that stems from my disbelief in UVA (if Malcolm Brogden has a bad game, they're done for). And then also, the match up is very good for Purdue. Mike Tobey is soft, and Anthony Gill is tough but I don't think they can bang down low with Purdue.
Interested to see others' thoughts.
I haven't watched Iona at all but I have watched ISU and I agree that they can disappear. I just don't think they will, I guess it doesn't matter that much because I have UVA knocking out either ISU or Purdue. They've been playing really good basketball over the past month. That said, Michigan State is my pick to go to the last weekend.
I really want to pick SFA over WVU but I just can't. SFA probably is the best 14 seed ever but WVU is pretty hot right now.
In the end I've got KU vs OU and UNC vs MSU. Then I've got KU beating MSU to win it all. I almost picked Kentucky over UNC because that's another team that's playing extremely well and Coach Cal is a wizard (as well as a giant prick). But I think UNC is more mature and has a much deeper bench so I've got them instead.
I'm going against the grain a bit and not picking MSU in the finals -- most people I know have them in the finals or winning. Right or wrong, I typically make my decisions based on the strength of schedule over the past 10 or so games and how convincingly they won (or lost). Over the past 10 games MSU played 2 ranked teams -- Purdue 2x and Maryland 1x. They lost in OT to Purdue, won by 3 vs. Maryland, and won by 4 vs. Purdue. I'd like to see their margin of victory be a bit higher vs. ranked teams for me to feel confident about them ultimately getting through the field of good teams to win it all, including Virginia, UNC, Kansas, etc. Can they? Definitely. But with all the other people picking MSU or Kansas to win (as did I), I figured I'd have to do something a little different, so I went with Kansas over UNC.
lots of first round upsets, all #2 chalk in final four
vill/oklahoma msu/xavier
msu over oklahoma in final
Plumlee was an absolute beast in that Duke/UNC Wilm game. They had no answers for his Bill Laimbeer style tenacity
Yale is making Baylor look silly right now. I think I'm the only one in my pool who picked that upset.
EDIT: Fuck, it's close now...
EDIT #2: Yeeeeeeeee
The LR Arkansas-Purdue game was wild
I picked Purdue to lose but its only b/c I mistakenly changed to ARk LR when scrolling down my Yahoo bracket on my phone. Fortunate goof.
Seton Hall really fucked up.
And there's goes my bracket. Thanks, Michigan State!
Et fugit consectetur nobis debitis sapiente. Ducimus magni est ex nam libero sed est nisi.
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