Initial Bracket Breakdown

I applaud the committee for giving Michigan State the 4th number 1 seed because they played a murderous schedule, including losing their first two games to North Carolina (on an aircraft carrier) and Duke.

I don't normally get into the debate over which bracket is toughest or easiest (at least not to the extent that the committee did something nefarious to help or hinder certain teams) but if Michigan State is the 4th Number 1, how did they get paired with Missouri? The committee chair admitted Missouri was 8th, punished for playing an embarrassingly weak non-conference schedule (3 teams above 300).

That said, I do understand that the committee has lots of masters to serve when filling out these brackets, meaning they wouldn't want (if it could be avoided) Duke and UNC or Michigan State and Ohio State in the same region.

As far as the bubble goes, Iona and BYU were clearly the last two teams in. With RPIs of 40 and 45 they are ahead of every other bubble team. Every team in the Top 40 got in, #44 Marshall was the highest RPI not to get in. For argument's sake let's say Seton Hall was the first team out, which means they were eliminated when St. Bonaventure beat Xavier in the A-10 tournament.

Iona's best wins were St. Joseph's and Nevada. But they were only 0-2 against the RPI top 50.
BYU beat Gonzaga and Oregon but went 1-6 against the top 50.
Seton Hall beat Georgetown, VCU, St. Joe's and UConn. 3-7 against the top 50. I think what really did Seton Hall in was a 5-10 finish, that's two solid months of .333 winning percentage play. And it included losses to Rutgers and DePaul down the stretch at the crucial time when one win could have put them in.

As always, there are ways to quibble with the selection committee. But if their biggest omission is a team with all those black marks on their resume than I guess they did a pretty good job.

But I don't understand why one pair of at-large teams plays into a 14th seed (the aforementioned BYU and Iona) while South Florida and California get to compete for a 12 seed, a much better first round match-up. I understand that all the 13-seeds were automatic qualifiers but couldn't one of them been slid down to the 14 line to make this play-in experiment a little more equitable.

Speaking of play-in games, Lamar gets to play against Vermont for the chance to be slaughtered by North Carolina.

Everyone always makes jokes about Lamar (and Robert Morris and Oral Roberts and William & Mary) because it's an entire team against one guy? Especially when the one guy is Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds.



But don't sleep on Lamar. They haven't lost a game since Pat Knight's epic rant about the worst group of seniors who are stealing scholarships.



I wish the committee had a better sense of humor. Why couldn't they bump Xavier down to an 11 for losing to St. Bonaventure and make them play Cincinnati in their first round game?

I hate to see Wichita State versus VCU. Both teams have big spoiler potential. But this was unavoidable because 3 of the 5s, and 3 of the 12s are mid-majors.

I think they did a better job though with this than in past years where it seems like they purposely matched mid-majors against one another to save the big conferences some potential embarrassments. Southern Miss vs. Kansas State, St. Mary's vs. Purdue, Creighton vs. Alabama, Xavier vs Notre Dame and Gonzaga vs West Virginia are all chances for the little guy to knock off the big guy.

I think Murray State and Harvard each should have been seeded one line higher. Murray State doesn't just have a great record, they have 3 top 30 wins and Harvard has a win over #11 Florida State.

A lot of people are picking against Michigan State but I love their bracket. Marquette and Missouri are both small teams, yes they can run and they can shoot, but if Michigan State can control tempo they can use their size, (Draymond Green anyone?) to beat either of those teams in the Elite 8. Louisville in the Sweet 16 might be a bigger hill to climb.

As for me, I will not pick against Tom Izzo. He has taken Michigan State to the tournament for 15 straight seasons. In those previous 14 years Michigan State was a 1 or 2 seed 4 times. They went to the Final 4 all four of those times. And twice more as a 5 seed. I will not bet against Tom Izzo.



I am also picking Kentucky based on talent, and I would love to pick North Carolina if Henson is healthy, but could be persuaded to go with Kansas.

You know I won't take all 4 number 1s, so you know I am not picking Syracuse to the Final 4, to find out way stay tuned for my Syracuse post later this week.