So the Big Dance tips off this afternoon. Sadly, I'll be working and won't be able to partake in the day's early festivities. Nevertheless, I'm entered into a couple of tourney pools, including a novel one at work where everyone picked four teams out of a hat, and whoever has the tourney-winning team is the pool champion. The twist here is that in order to advance with your team, they have to win by one more than the difference in their seeding. For instance, one of my teams is Winthrop, a 14 seed playing against Gonzaga. Naturally, if Winthrop pulls the upset, I move on with the Eagles to the next round. However, if Gonzaga wins by 11 points or fewer (the difference in seeds between the teams), the person holding Gonzaga loses in our tournament and I take over the Bulldogs going forward!
My initial impression is that there are two types of teams that this format favors: teams that are underseeded - especially if they play a slow-paced game and teams that are supremely talented (UConn last year, when they won all of their opening round games by 18 or more) and will crush all comers. That being the case, I'm feeling best about my three lowly-seeded teams (Winthrop, St. Mary's and Iowa State) and worse about my higher-seeded team (Michigan State).
On a related note, here's my picks for the first round games to watch: Alabama-UW-Milwaukee, Arizona-Utah State, Georgia Tech-GW, Wisconsin-Northern Iowa, Kansas-Bucknell, Oklahoma-Niagara, and last but not least, Syracuse-Vermont. All of the 8-9 and 7-10 games could be close and it's hard to call any result there an upset, so I excluded them from the list. But don't be surprised if you see the lower seed winning some of these other games. And remember that you saw it here first.
Getting back to my pick for game of the first round, I liked both Syracuse and Vermont as teams that had the potential to reach at least the sweet sixteen before the brackets were released on Sunday. Trade either team with the corresponding seed in the Chicago region (BC or Penn) and I'd definitely have 'em both marching on for two rounds. But alas, they meet in the first round. If there were only one first round game that I could watch, this would be the one.
Vermont matches up pretty well with Syracuse, and the battle between Hakim Warrick and Taylor Coppenrath should be great - these guys will both be playing on the next level. TJ Sorrentine vs. Gerry McNamara will be an appetizing undercard as well. The biggest key to the game will be foul trouble. If any of these four players has to spend lots of minutes on the bench, their team will be in trouble. Syracuse has struggled to find a third scoring option all year long. Josh Pace has emerged as the greatest threat, so he could be a key to victory for the Orangemen. Finally, it'll be interesting to see how the Catamounts handle the Syracuse 2-3 zone. I'm not sure how much of it they've seen in America East competition and the onus will be on Sorrentine to get the ball inside. With Vermont playing to give their coach a nice retirement present, I can absolutely see them knocking off the Orangemen... but then again, maybe not. (and it the result here has a large impact on my bracket, since I'm not holding my breath on Duke either...)
My initial impression is that there are two types of teams that this format favors: teams that are underseeded - especially if they play a slow-paced game and teams that are supremely talented (UConn last year, when they won all of their opening round games by 18 or more) and will crush all comers. That being the case, I'm feeling best about my three lowly-seeded teams (Winthrop, St. Mary's and Iowa State) and worse about my higher-seeded team (Michigan State).
On a related note, here's my picks for the first round games to watch: Alabama-UW-Milwaukee, Arizona-Utah State, Georgia Tech-GW, Wisconsin-Northern Iowa, Kansas-Bucknell, Oklahoma-Niagara, and last but not least, Syracuse-Vermont. All of the 8-9 and 7-10 games could be close and it's hard to call any result there an upset, so I excluded them from the list. But don't be surprised if you see the lower seed winning some of these other games. And remember that you saw it here first.
Getting back to my pick for game of the first round, I liked both Syracuse and Vermont as teams that had the potential to reach at least the sweet sixteen before the brackets were released on Sunday. Trade either team with the corresponding seed in the Chicago region (BC or Penn) and I'd definitely have 'em both marching on for two rounds. But alas, they meet in the first round. If there were only one first round game that I could watch, this would be the one.
Vermont matches up pretty well with Syracuse, and the battle between Hakim Warrick and Taylor Coppenrath should be great - these guys will both be playing on the next level. TJ Sorrentine vs. Gerry McNamara will be an appetizing undercard as well. The biggest key to the game will be foul trouble. If any of these four players has to spend lots of minutes on the bench, their team will be in trouble. Syracuse has struggled to find a third scoring option all year long. Josh Pace has emerged as the greatest threat, so he could be a key to victory for the Orangemen. Finally, it'll be interesting to see how the Catamounts handle the Syracuse 2-3 zone. I'm not sure how much of it they've seen in America East competition and the onus will be on Sorrentine to get the ball inside. With Vermont playing to give their coach a nice retirement present, I can absolutely see them knocking off the Orangemen... but then again, maybe not. (and it the result here has a large impact on my bracket, since I'm not holding my breath on Duke either...)
