Thursday, March 15, 2007

march madness has arrived

Ahh...March Madness is finally here. This is indisputably the best extended weekend of the year for any sports fan. So I know you've probably been thinking, "Jesse hasn't posted about March Madness yet, so he must be dead." Well, not quite. Been busy doing other stuff...like, well, nothing, and occasionally something useful like planning a Peru trip that could be on the fritz at this point. That and I haven't been as eager to blog since I've had to tolerate this crappy Firefox as I might be were I using my trusty Microsoft browser (man that hurts to say), but I'll give it a try anyway.

First off, my bracket...which I stupidly left at the office and thus can't remember some details for. Speaking of which, some guys at the office have a really good idea for an office pool going. It's a very low $5 per entry, with one entry per household (none of this crap of family members nobody knows entering and taking office money). Best of all, instead of a winner-take-all system, the champ gets to choose what charity to donate the pool money to. Not only is this a good cause, but it makes our office pool legal because we're not gambling but donating. That makes it the first legal tourney pool I've ever participated in. Alas, all streaks must come to an end.

Anyway, pressing on...my Final Four is Florida (a good team in an otherwise criminally weak bracket), UCLA (for the second straight year they have been bestowed with killer home-court advantage in that they don't have to play a game outside of their home state until the Final Four; if you ask me that's messed up), Ohio State (a risky pick with their best players being freshmen, but I think they're the best team in the field nonetheless), and Texas (a really risky pick, but they have the best player in the country in Durant and he could carry them through the strongest bracket of the four). I really like the Gators and Bruins; the 'Horns and Buckeyes I'm not so confident in because those brackets are toss-ups and the East is so freakin' loaded -- I count six legitimate Final Four contenders over there (UNC, Georgetown, Washington State, Texas, Boston College, Michigan State). But despite the risk, I have OSU beating Florida in the final. A bold pick, yes, but I do think they're the best team of the 65. And they have two superstars, so they have that rare ability to weather a poor game by a gamebreaker and still survive. North Carolina has the deepest team, but they lack a solid go-to guy and they're young. Florida is good but they sure have been streaky lately. The Bruins would make a nice sleeper pick, but I just can't see them getting past Florida in the semifinal round.

As for upsets, Virginia Commonwealth over pathetic Duke was an easy one. The Blue Devils are as overseeded as they've ever been, and that's saying a lot. I don't remember too many others. I think I had Texas Tech over Boston College (real gutsy pick but Knight hasn't let me down in previous tourneys), Albany over Virginia (the Cavs have played the most lopsidedly weak in-conference schedule of any BCS team -- the ACC idiots need to prevent that from ever happening again), Winthrop over Notre Dame (two red-hot teams but I have to pick against the Irish) and Gonzaga over Indiana. The Big Ten was weak this year and Gonzaga looks awfully underseeded for a team that was in and out of the top 10 early in the year.

Oh, and of course I picked the Hogs over Southern Cal. If you ignore the naysayers and look at Arkansas' record, you'll see that they played a lot of close games this year against very good teams. I think they can play with just about anybody if they're clicking. Hopefully they will be after hearing everybody talk about them and Illinois as the undeserving BCS teams that got in via conference affiliation only. (I must admit that I think they were a lucky entry into the field, but now that it's tourney time all that doesn't matter.) And I really don't like USC as a 5-seed; I think they're overseeded by at least one, maybe two seeds. They got blasted by overseeded (3) Oregon in the Pac-10 final and didn't even close out the year in the top 25. So call me a homer if you want, but I smell an upset brewing there. Unfortunately, though, the Hogs will have no answer for Texas' Durant.

I know I picked North Texas over Memphis as my annual huge upset special this year. Memphis has been playing lousy teams for the past two months straight, which means they'll either show up ill-prepared for the big time and playing sloppy or they'll show up pissed off and wanting to make a statement to those giving them heck for their high seed based on an inflated record. Hopefully it'll be the former. And I hate everything about John Calipari so it's easy to pick him to lose.

For this year's Cinderella, I like Nevada. They dropped from a likely 3-4 to a 7 seed only for losing early in their conference tourney, so they ought to be fired up. And they're a heck of a lot better than that 7-seed shows. The only teams between them and the Sweet 16 are Creighton, Memphis, and North Texas. I think they'll handle Creighton and then scorch a North Texas team that'll be tired from their brutal battle with Memphis. But Texas A&M will end their run there.

Nuff said. Bring on the basketball, baby!

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