Bracket Thoughts

- For those of you that are not long-time readers you probably don’t know that Selection Sunday is one of my favorite days of the year. To check out the piece I wrote about Selection Sunday last year, click here.

- Pitt fans should be thrilled with the Panthers draw. I commented to my brother on Sunday that I do not think Pitt could have received a better region if they had picked it out themselves.

- I have read or heard others who do not think Pitt’s draw is as good as I believe because of their potential second round (I guess it is now called the third round but nobody is speaking in those terms yet) match-up with Old Dominion or Butler and a possible Sweet 16 opponent of Kansas State. Listen…if you are a number one seed and you are worried about a 2nd round game against a non-power conference team and the team you think offers the most potential problems in your region is the #5 seed, you got a damn good draw.

- I would agree that Duke has the second easiest region among the four number one seeds (many of the TV experts think Duke has the easiest). That leads me to the question of what the heck is the committee doing? Ohio State and Kansas are clearly the #1 and #2 overall seeds in the tournament and were named rightly so. How can the committee justify having their regions being the most difficult? I know this is a matter of perception but still, it is pretty clear to even the least knowledgeable college basketball fan that Kansas and Ohio State were not rewarded properly for their overall seeds.

- I guess the actual reason is not the committee’s fault. This whole idea of putting the top seeds in their “pods” and then placing them in the respective regions to keep them close to their fan bases is ridiculous. Line the teams up 1-68 and seed the tournament accordingly.

- Another pet-peeve of mine that has developed is listening to these “experts” calling teams such as Purdue, Louisville and Syracuse a “sleeper”. We need to make some kind of universal ground rules up for what a sleeper is. My suggestion is two-part:

(1) If we are talking about the ability to win the national championship, no team that is a top four seed in its region can be considered a sleeper. If you are ranked in the top 15 or 16 in the country you have a legitimate shot to win six straight games and cut down the nets.

(2) If we are talking about true sleepers, as in a team that people would be at least a little bit surprised if they made the Sweet 16 or better, then a team must be seeded 7th or higher in its region to be considered. No one would be surprised if #6 seeds like Georgetown or Cincinnati make a little run to the Sweet 16 or Elite 8. They are not sleepers.

- Speaking of Georgetown, if it is true that Chris Wright is expected back I see a legitimate scenario where the Big East has seven or eight Sweet 16 teams and possibly three of the Final Four teams. Even with that kind of depth, however, I still don’t see a Big East team winning the National Championship. My money today would be on Duke, Ohio State or Kansas…and I am leaning towards Duke after seeing each team’s respective brackets.

- I will make my official picks Thursday morning. We have to see who wins these horrible, nobody really cares about them, play-in games before we make our official predictions right?!? But since you’re reading this today, I’ll take Clemson, USC, UNC-Asheville and UT-San Antonio in the play-in games.