Welcome Back From Spring Break

By Doc Elder

 

Welcome back from Spring Break. We missed you, and I bet you missed us.

OK, enough of that cheesy small talk. Let’s get down to brass tacks, as we—for some strange reason—used to say back in the day. While there are many sports-related themes that I could address this week, the most important question for the vast majority of you revolves around whether or not you have filled out your NCAA tournament brackets properly. Because the play-in games start this evening, I figured that I could weigh in on the subject and perhaps give you some keen insights like I was able to regarding the NFL. So let’s take a swing around this great nation of ours bracket-wise, shall we?

 

East

The tourism motto of Virginia is “Virginia is for lovers,” and I think that the statement works pretty well for those of you who are filling out your brackets. I think Villanova is a pretty weak two-seed, and while the Iowan in me wants to say that Iowa State could win it all, I think the fact that the Cyclones start a freshman point guard does not bode well. Four-seed Michigan State probably has the best chance to upset Virginia, but I still think the Cavaliers are the obvious choice to win the East.

 

South

Greyhound assistant basketball coach Stott Carter played for Florida in his collegiate days, so I’ll pick the Gators to win the South region.

OK, maybe we need a little more discussion on this one. Here again, I’m not all that impressed with the two- and three-seeds. Syracuse has lost a lot of games recently, and Kansas lost its best defensive player to a back injury. Lobo fans actually might finally see the guys from the Albuquerque win a tournament game. However, like everyone else in that region, the Lobos will watch the Gators cut down the net in the regional final game in New York.

 

Midwest

This region is the toughest to pick. Wichita State on paper looks like it should sweep through to the Final Four, but I’m not so sure. Last weekend, I saw every undefeated team at the New Mexico state high school basketball tournament go down to defeat, and I’m therefore now a bit leery of choosing the Shockers to take the Midwest. I like the way Louisville is playing right now, so I’m going to pick them to win that region.

 

West

Hmmm, let me get this straight. Arizona, Creighton, and San Diego State lost their conference tournament championship games and still get the one-, three-, and four-seeds. Wisconsin doesn’t even get to the Big Ten championship game and gets the two-seed. If there was ever a chance for a dark horse to win a region, this should be it. However, I don’t really see any of the 16 teams out West except for Gonzaga coming in with anything resembling momentum.

I’m going to pick Arizona for the following reasons. First, Arizona offered me a big fellowship when I was considering grad schools. (I wound up going to the University of California-San Diego, but I still appreciate the vote of confidence Arizona gave me.) Second, Lute Olson. Before he became the Arizona coach, he was the coach at the University of Iowa, and the high school team I used to coach would go to his summer basketball camp.

What’s that, you say? You think my reasoning is pretty suspect? Hey, I never said I had a computer model for predicting outcomes like that Nate Silver guy has. I just said I correctly predicted back in August that the Seahawks would win the Super Bowl, so my track record for picking winners is pretty good. You can take my advice or leave it, and we’ll see in next week’s column how my predictions are looking.