Tournament Thoughts

Here are some quick thoughts from my first look at the brackets (without revealing too much about my picks):

Kudos
The Committee did a great job, I'll discuss a couple minor problems, but this may be the least controversial bracket in years.

Was Dukey V on the Committee?
The biggest bone of contention this year is placing Duke as a #2 ahead of Wisconsin. Obviously the Committee thought that if Wisconsin had played in the ACC (#1 rated conference by RPI), instead of the horrible Big 10, they wouldn't have gone 29-4.

Challenging Conference
And one of the other big complaints is that the ACC only got 4 teams. But if you use that argument then how can you complain that Duke got the #2? Anyway, Virginia Tech was probably the last team out and Villanova was the last team in (only at large 12 seed), and the differences between them are almost non-existent. Tough call, I just don't see how you can complain either way.

Home Away From Home
Another major complaint is how some teams get to play in their home state against a team that is a higher seed. We go through this argument every year and it's never proven to be an advantage (if the "home" team wins about 50% of the time, it's not an advantage), but people still like to bitch about it. So Texas will get to play in Houston if they reach the Sweet 16, and if they reach the Elite 8, they'll play Memphis there.

USA! USA!
My biggest complaint however is that they paired mid-majors against each other. I think the mid-majors vs. majors is a major storyline of the first weekend and by pairing Butler against South Alabama and Gonzaga against Davidson, they robbed us of that. Plus, they let South Alabama play their first round game in Birmingham, which doesn't make sense because of the perception of an advantage. There is no reason why South Alabama and Arizona shouldn't have switched places.

Pretty Fly For a White Guy
Two of the best white players in the nation (not named Kevin Love), Chase Budinger and Joe Alexander, will go at it in a first round matchup.

And After the Game They'll Play Chess
Stanford will play Cornell in an academically gifted matchup. Although we all acknowledge that Cornell is the bastard stepchild of the Ivy League, I'm sure the Committee took these school's academic reputations into account when setting this matchup.

A Chance To Prove Me Right
Last week I said "the team that passes on [O.J. Mayo] in the NBA Draft to take [Michael] Beasley is making a big mistake," and now the whole world will see it. Trust me, O.J. Mayo is awesome. And the best thing about him, is that on the floor he is the exact opposite of every thing that was said about him off the floor. He is unselfish, to a fault, he tries hard, and makes all the right decisions. He can shoot from the outside, he can drive to the basket and he has an excellent midrange game. He loves setting up his teammates, he gets a lot of rebounds, and scores when he has to. O.J. Mayo is quite frankly, Jamesian.

Bubble Trouble
The bubble team that has the least to complain about this morning is Arizona State. With an RPI in the 80s, they'd have been by far the lowest rated team to ever get in. But that didn't stop perpetual grump Billy Packer from bringing their case up the head of the Committee. He rightly pointed out that Arizona State beat Arizona twice.
I wish Tom O'Connor had asked if Packer thought it wise to judge teams on 2 games, and ignore the other 31 played by Arizona and 29 by Arizona State.
ASU did beat Xavier and Stanford, while Arizona beat Texas A&M and UNLV, but Arizona's losses were more impressive, 7 of them to Kansas, Memphis, UCLA and Stanford.
The fact is ASU feasted on cupcakes early and went 5-10 down the stretch. The Committee likes teams to play strong non-conference schedules and to finish strong. ASU did neither, not enough to justify making them the worst rated at-large team ever.

This Could Be The Year
Every year the idiot girl in your office picks all four number one seeds to go to the Final Four, this could be the year she's finally right. While I don't think this will ever happen, of all the years I've been studying the tournament this is the first year I've even considered it as a serious possibility.