NCAA Tourney Time

NCAA Tourney Time

Top Initial Thoughts:

1.My UCSB Gauchos made the tourney again, by winning the Big West tournament for the second year in a row by knocking off Long Beach State. The Gauchos won easily, but I really don't know how they did it. Look for Florida to slaughter the Gauchos. The Line is 12.5 as of right now. The game is on St. Pattys Day at 4pm (PCT), take a wild guess what I will be doing.
2. The toughest bracket has to be the East---top seeds Ohio St, North Carolina, Kentucky and Syracuse. Then you throw Washington (7), West Virginia (5) and George Mason (8). Wow. That is ridiculously brutal. What happened to the PAC-10? Washington wins the PAC-10 tourney and gets North Carolina in round 2. I would love to see the Huskies stomp the Heels in the second round = my favorite possible upset for that round. How does Kentucky blow out Florida in the SEC title game and pull a #4 seed? That's just wrong. Florida gets a soft #2 seed. What happened in that seeding conference? Those guys seem to get worse each year.
3. My favorite bracket has to be the West. Top seeds are Duke, SDSU, UConn and Arizona. It's a real thin bracket, but a great top four teams should make it a sensational 'Sweet Sixteen' in Anaheim. I'm going to the games and can't wait to see the Aztecs dominate. Yes, Duke is good--but come on, they are not a power house. They are soft and rely on outside shooting to win games. The Aztecs can take them down as long as they hang around and play perimeter defense. The Aztecs play great D but have a hard time hitting 3-pointers, making it real hard for them to come from behind against elite teams.
4. The easiest bracket has to be the SouthEast. You gotta be kidding me with this group. Top seeds Pitt, Florida, BYU and Wisconsin are real weak. BYU has played terrible since losing F Davies, who was suspended for sleeping with his girlfriend (nice bylaws BYU, they deserve to be punished for those rules). BYU and Wisconsin are the worst #3 & #4 seeds in the tourney. So, we are left with basically two teams in the entire bracket....ugh. Terrible just terrible.
5. The SouthWest bracket really isn't much better. Top seeds Kansas, Notre Dame, Purdue and Louisville aren't that daunting. Best match up will be Kansas vs Louisville in round 3. My favorite team to watch might be the USC Trojans, they play Wednesday against VCU to get into the tourney. They are early 4.5 point favorites---love it, take them asap. Then they get the Hoyas and Purdue, both winnable games (if winnable is really a word). The Irish are the #2 seed despite losing to Louisville in the Big East tourney semis, while Louisville got the #4. The Irish have the potential to win this group...really.
6. At least there isn't one set of dominant teams this season, so that every idiot can't just fill in the #1 seeds across the board and win your tourney challenges. Man, I hated those guys who didn't watch a single college game all year and then stood on top of your tourney leader boards by simply picking the top seeds in every game.

**Feel free to pick USC (-4.5) and Clemson (-4) in the tourney play-in games this week to start off.

One NBA Pick: OKC Thunder (-7) at Washington Wizards, playing without Forwards Blatche and Lewis. Also, C Kendrick Perkins might return for the Thunder tonight. The Wiz just lost at home to the Clips by 21 points on Saturrday and have dropped three straight games. Go Thunder!!