Pre-Tournament Thoughts

Last year there were only 3 upsets in the NCAA Tournament, only 3 games when a team beat an opponnent with a seed more than one spot better. Those 3 games were #11 VCU over #6 Duke, #6 Vanderbilt over #3 Washington State and #7 UNLV over #2 Wisconsin.

CORRECTION: I forgot #11 Winthrop over #6 Notre Dame.

This year I think you can expect more of the same as the very best teams are strong, while the others aren't so great. I do think you will see a few more upsets in the early rounds, but the later rounds should go according to form.

For that reason I am picking North Carolina, Memphis and UCLA to make the Final Four. 3 #1 seeds for only the second time ever, and although I swore them off, I'm picking Georgetown as my fourth team because Wisconsin sucks and I don't believe in Kansas.

I like Memphis because they have incredible talent and although they could struggle with Texas, I don't place any import on the fact that the game is being played in Houston. And write this down, if Pitt survives Oral Roberts and Michigan State (or Temple), they have no chance against Memphis. Memphis is so superior athletically that they could miss every free throw they attempt and still run Pitt out of the gym by 20 points. Memphis's poor free throw shooting is drastically overrated. While it is important late in games, usually the better free throw shooters are shooting in those situations, Joey Dorsey won't be on the line shooting two, down by 1 with 30 seconds to go. Those shots will go to Derrick Rose and CDR (watch the announcers try to call him Chris Douglas-Roberts every time, then give up and just go with CDR by the second half) in the crucial situations. Also, Memphis just happened to have a particularly poor game from the line when they played Tennessee, the only time most people have seen them play all year. But the difference over the course of one game between Memphis and the average team from the line will be about 2 points, 13 of 20 compared to 15 of 20. Not likely enough to be the difference between winning and losing, living and dying.

I've got Indiana winning their first round game against Arkansas. They have one of the best duos in the nation in Gordon and White, let's see if they've just phoned it in.

The 5-12 upset will return this year. My choice is Villanova over Clemson because I think Villanova has the ball-handling and the outside shooting to make Clemson pay for pressing them. I think Notre Dame and Drake are too strong to get knocked off, so I had a 50/50 shot between Clemson and Michigan State but Coach Izzo always does well in the tournament.

I'm also going with 2 11s over 6s. I've got St. Joseph's over Oklahoma and Kentucky over Marquette. I've never been impressed with Marquette and I think Kentucky is a completely different team than they were earlier this season. I picked against Oklahoma because they were the most glaring "overseed" in the field. Those teams usually lose in the first round.

So that puts me down to two 6 seeds remaining, one of which will go to the Sweet 16. Obviously I'm picking USC and my boy O.J. Mayo. A second round matchup against Wisconsin, the weakest 3 seed (in terms of talent, not tournament resume which I discussed in my bracket breakdown, there is a difference) and the one with the style of play easiest to exploit, easy-pickings for a USC team with superior talent.

Every year you also get one 2 seed that doesn't make the Sweet 16. If that happens this year it would have to be Duke that gets knocked off. Tennessee and Texas are much better teams, and Georgetown plays a steady enough game that they should avoid an upset, plus they have Hibbert and two undersized opponents looming in the second round. I also don't like Duke's style of play because on a cold shooting night they have nothing to fall back on. I have had incredible success over the years correctly predicting the 2 seed that would fall victim to the 2nd round upset, but I always seem to have them losing to the wrong team, most famously predicting that Penny Hardaway at Memphis State - as it was called at the time - would knock of Seton Hall, but Western Kentucky actually did it.. But I am going with Arizona and their athleticism over West Virginia and Duke. I think Arizona's tough schedule has gotten them ready for the rigors of March. No, I don't really believe that but I wanted to say it because if it happens every pundit in America will say those exact words. Even the political pundits who don't cover college basketball will echo that meaningless platitude.

Kudos to those of you who recognized meaningless platitude as a redundancy, like the kind favored by the windbag pundits I'm making fun of here.

Even with those upset picks I have a rather conservative bracket, the top 16 seeds all winning in the first round. If I had to pick one of those teams to get shocked, I'd say Winthrop over Washington State. I like the Pac-10 but was never impressed with WSU this season and I actually did seem them play more than any other team out there except for UCLA. WSU is steady but not spectacular. I'm not jumping on the Siena bandwagon (sorry Jems) because I like Vanderbilt's consistency.

Stanford will win two games, but that's it. The Lopez brothers are good and present huge matchup problems for most teams but they lack other good players to provide scoring. Texas should handle them. One reason I don't see Stanford getting knocked off early, a lot of times a key to an upset of a team with a good big man, is he gets in foul trouble and the team can't score or defend without him. But if one Lopez gets in foul trouble, they have another one just like him, though admittedly Robin doesn't have the offensive game of Brook, but he's coming around.

Drake will beat UConn. I've said a couple times already that outside shooting teams are vulnerable to a cold shooting night but Drake has so many good shooters that I can't imagine them all going cold at the same time. And with Adam Emmenecker running the point (he won MVC Player of the Year scoring 8.5 points per game) he'll find the hot shooter, probably Klayton Korver. Drake's style of play also negates one of UConn's greatest strengths, their shot blocking. I don't think you'll see Hasheem Thabeet ("turn Thabeet around, got to hear percussion" - Tony Kornheiser) on the perimeter trying to block 3-pointers.

Gus Johnson is going to be in Denver calling Michigan State-Temple, Pittsburgh-Oral Roberts, Notre Dame-George Mason and Washinton State-Winthrop. He's got no #1 or even #2 seeds likely to cause blowouts. We should get a couple exciting moments from him this weekend.