3/23/11 - Basketball Is… "Madness" - “We don’t know who deserves to be in…”

Looking back at the first three rounds of this year’s NCAA Tournament, it appears that former Fab-Fiver and current ESPN analyst Jimmy King’s lone whistle in the gale force winds of bracket analysis was prescient. When teams like Richmond, VCU and Florida State make the Sweet Sixteen, and teams like Alabama and Colorado don’t get in at all, it also seems refreshingly honest. There always has been, and always will be, talk of parity in college hoops, even though it’s really hard to recall the last time a team outside of the major conferences one it all. But this year, it seems more relevant than ever, with 5 teams from “mid-major” conferences making the Sweet Sixteen. 

More parity means more madness. That means that I can engage in shocking hubris by picking #10 seed Michigan State to make it to the championship game and still have a chance to win my pool. (Everyone else must have had Pitt…) But not that great of a chance - which is why I turned to “Round by Round” (http://freeroundbyround.1.mayhem.cbssports.com/opcr), on CBS, where a lot of folks already do their regular brackets. “Round by Round” allows you to pick over, you know, if you didn’t have VCU beating USC in the play-in game, let alone Purdue to make the Sweet Sixteen. If you want to check it out, you have until tomorrow at 6:55 EST to sign up for this next round. 

If you do, or if you’re just interested otherwise. Here are my predictions of how the next round will go:

In the East, Ohio State will beat Kentucky, and North Carolina will beat Marquette, setting up an Elite Eight match-up between two of my favorite schools. 

Duke is looking really, really good in the West. And if I didn’t hate them with a passion that could power Oakland for at least a year, I would pick them over Arizona. But here we are: Bear Down ‘Cats! Besides who doesn’t want to root for a team who has a star player called, “Mo Mo”??

My only pristine Sweet Sixteen match-up is UConn versus San Diego State. I think that UConn will prevail in this one, perhaps setting up a meeting in the Elite Eight with old nemesis Dook. Perhaps it will lead to the miraculous return of Khalid El-Amin!?! 

Like Ohio State and Dook, #1 seed Kansas has held serve in the Southwest bracket. While their Sweet Sixteen opponent Richmond is on their best roll since 1988, which included a first round upset of Bobby Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers, Kansas is also talented, experienced and deep. For good measure, they have 1988 tourney MVP Danny Manning on their bench. 

The Sweet Sixteen is usually where the Cinderella teams from the mid-major conferences turn into pumpkins at the hands of the surviving teams from the major conferences. That should be the case in the VCU/Florida State game. In fact, Florida State is starting to play at a level that should put a scare into potential Elite Eight opponent Kansas.

In the Southeast, I am hoping that Wisconsin destroys the brats from Butler, who have again somehow managed to make an elitist, exclusive school seem all cuddly. I’m also rooting for fellow large, public school Florida to beat the proselytizers from Brigham Young University. That would set up a Wisconsin/Florida match-up in the Elite Eight.

I would give you my re-evaluation of the rest of the tournament – the Elite Eight, the Final Four, and the Finals – but since we’re going “Round by Round”, I don’t have to...