Yesterday I went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how much I love Wichita State. I could probably write another twenty blog posts on the subject, but I will refrain myself. Anyway here is my feeble attempt at predicting an unpredictable tournament. In the end (with a couple exceptions) I picked mostly chalk. I have a 1 seed (Michigan St), two 2 seeds (Ohio St, Kansas) and of course my favorite team in the field, Wichita State. (Quick tangent I promise I had Syracuse losing before today's news, I mean I did write a post about my disgust of them)
There are a couple of surprising upsets among this bracket. Belmont beating Georgetown may come as a surprise, but they are a lot closer than they appear. Belmont has the the twelve ranked offense in basketball, and have played very competitively against other tournament teams, Duke and Memphis. While Georgetown does have a stingy defense, they are prone going into long shooting droughts which could spell trouble for a hot shooting Belmont team. The other big surprise comes with the Virginia over Missouri and Marquette predictions. Virginia has one of the best defenses in the country and a very talented forward in Mike Scott. They should be able to pester the smaller Missouri team and out rebound the Tigers significantly. Virginia is ranked fourth in defensive rebound percentage, which paired with its staunch defense should prevent Missouri from second chance opportunities. Virginia faces similar challenges with a potential Marquette match up. Since losing the 6'11 Chris Otule in early December Marquette has been forced to play a smaller lineup. Sometimes its not about who is the best team, its what your match up is. Virginia in the Elite 8 is a huge reach, but wheres the fun in not taking chances in March. Either this bracket is the end all be all of brackets (which would prove the Mayans right) or I will be completely off. (I'd bet on the latter)
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