Selection Sunday Review

Some initial thoughts following the release of the NCAA tournament bracket:

#1 seeds
No surprise in who the four #1 seeds were as they were the 4 contenders that won their conference tournaments. UCLA losing in the first round of the Pac-10 tourney really hurt them. One thing that was surprising to me was Ohio State getting the 3rd overall seed in the tournament. I thought that if they could win the Big Ten tourney, then they would be the overall #1 seed. I think that the two main things that stopped that from happening was the fact that OSU lost to both Florida and North Carolina (the two teams seeded above them) early in the season and the fact that the Big Ten title game ended too late for the commitee to consider it.

Midwest Regional
--Upset alert: #5 Butler vs. #12 Old Dominion, #4 Maryland vs. #13 Davidson, and #11 Winthrop vs. #6 Notre Dame.
--#1 Florida seems to have the easiest road of any 1 seed to the Final Four as both #2 Wisconsin and #3 Pittsburgh are coming off rough ends to the season.
--Watch out for the winner of the #7 UNLV/#10 Georgia Tech game to have a serious shot against #2 Wisconsin.

West Regional
--#1 Kansas and #2 UCLA are an extremely strong 1-2 punch out of this region.
--Upset alert: #4 Southern Illinois vs. #13 Holy Cross, #6 Duke vs. #11 VCU
--Ben Howland may face his old team, #3 Pittsburgh, in the Sweet 16.

East Regional
--The top half of this bracket is absolutely loaded with #1 North Carolina and #4 Texas as a potential Sweet 16 game.
--Upset alert: #7 Boston College vs. #10 Texas Tech, #5 USC vs. #12 Arkansas
--Georgetown has a very easy road to the Elite 8 on the the bottom half of this bracket.
--The winner of the game between #8 Marquette and #9 Michigan State will give North Carolina a run in the second round.

South Regional
--#1 Ohio State should have a fairly easy road to the Elite 8 with a weak top half of the bracket.
--Upset alert: #7 Nevada vs. #10 Creighton, #4 Virginia vs. #13 Albany
--#2 Memphis vs. #3 Texas A&M and the winner of that game against Ohio State should both be great games.

Bubble Teams
I think that Drexel and Syracuse were the two teams left out that should have been in. Drexel took advantage of every opprutunity they had to play a major conference opponent by winning at Syracuse, at Villanova and at Creighton. Arkansas was a ridiculous addition in my opinion, as they got in after going 7-9 in the SEC West, a terrible division. Illinois is another team that I don't think deserved to get in as they only had to play Ohio State and Wisconsin one time each in Big Ten play. Two other teams with legitimate at-large claims that got left out were Florida State and Kansas State.