The Madness of March

I haven't been paying much attention to the NCAA tournament because, after all, I've got a little tournament of my own to care about. And I'm far from the world's greatest expert on college basketball. But, hey, it's March and I've always liked to fill out a bracket just for the heck of it. Sadly, there's no office pool for me to enter but there are plenty of online bracket contests. There's the big ESPN one, of course (And check out their “national bracket” which is an aggregate of all the picks made. Wisdom of the commons and all but you never know if there's a George Mason out there to buck the odds.). And, big scary and all, I figure what have I got to lose?

You get five brackets. I've filled out four so far, and I'll fill out the last before the deadline of Thursday after I've had some time to rethink my choices and do a little more research maybe. The first three were just variations on a theme. Just different ways the tournament could turn out if things tumble one way or the other. But as an experiment in random outcomes, for the last one I just flipped a coin. The random factors of the universe have a strange liking of Holy Cross so I'm not sure how well it'll turn out but they did say Florida would take it all so maybe they're not so out there after all.

As for my actual brackets, I went with a few tidbits I've picked up in my casual acquaintance with this year's field.

• There are several credible #1s and #2s this year. Any of them could win it all. But there's never been a year that all the #1s have made it to the Finals. It's not likely to happen this year, either.
• 16 seeds are going to get creamed.
• Upsets come from the seeds in the 10~13 range. And there's usually more than one.
• The Big Ten is overrated and has way too many teams in the field. The top of their field, though, is surprisingly good. Wisconsin is ripe but Ohio State is scary. And hard to judge since they didn't have Odom for much of their out-of-conference schedule.
• Texas is a one man team. A great one man team but I expect Durant to have at least one bad game and against a good team that's going to get Texas bounced. Their bracket is filled with good teams.
• Kansas chokes. Always.
• Florida has a cakewalk to the Final Four and the experience not to let it slip away from them.
• UCLA could have a deep run or they could lose in the Sweet Sixteen. It's hard to say.
• Duke is going to lose and lose badly early. They're having a rare down year, it's blood in the water time, and every team they face is going to be amped to knock them out.
• Georgetown is my pick to win it all. If the make it to the Finals. They have to come out of the loaded East but they're big, talented, and have had an awesome season.

Pretty nifty little interface on the ESPN brackets, too, completely drag and drop. Although I could do without the ads.

There's also a bracket set up for XoO members through Yahoo Sports and I think I'll join in on that, too. I've been meaning to get more involved in the community over there – it's just with the tournament and the late playtime and all, it's hard to catch anyone outside of OoX and some OoHs or Main die-hards. And, to put it bluntly, I don't really like some of them, so I tend to avoid the whole lot.