The NCAA Tournament (West Bracket)

I am a very humble person I think. Yea, I kid every now and then about how great I am at things, but it's all in fun. Today, instead of complaining about the difficult job that the NCAA Committee did yesterday, and before I start my predictions for the tourney I would like to tell you about how well I did in my predictions back in November for the NCAA basketball season.

At the beginning of the 2008-2009 NCAA season I gave you my predictions on who would be the conference winners and the at-large teams to advance into the tournament. And I can honestly say that I actually will do a lot of reading and debating on who I think might be good enough to make the tournament in March before I did my blog. How hard is it to do well on something like this? Just think of it this way, there was 33 teams that made the tournament this season that were not on your brackets a year ago. Well, I thought that I did very well. I correctly picked 37 teams to make the tournament this pre-season, correctly picking 13 of the conference winners. That's 57 %! I could have done a lot better too, at least 10 teams either finished in 1st place at the end of the regular season or went to the conference championship game and ended up losing in their conference tournament. So today I apologize for my gloating, but I gotta say I feel pretty good about my predictions I made back in November. I am just not going to get into me picking the Notre Dame Fighting Irish to make it into the Final Four though, not today. Let's get into my predictions for the NCAA Tournament this season.

My West Bracket

1)UCONN vs. 16) Chattanooga

8) BYU vs. 9) Texas A&M

5) Purdue vs. 12) Northern Iowa

4) Washington vs. 13) Mississippi St

6) Marquette vs. 11) Utah State

3) Missouri vs. 14) Cornell

7) California vs. 10) Maryland

2) Memphis vs. 15) Cal St Northridge

I started with the West because honestly it was by far the easiest bracket to do. Which means, at least to me that the top seeds have an easy road until they face each other. And the top seeds are UCONN and Memphis. Once I saw the bracket I saw no bump at any point, no matter how you look at it, for the Huskies road to advancing to the Elite Eight, something that I am tired of seeing. Are there any objective UCONN fans out there that will agree with me? Does this mean that I think that this is the weakest bracket...no. But, that could mean that a sleeper is really hidden in this bracket, and have I found them?...possibly. I would really like to know a person filling out their sheet(s) that doesn't pick UCONN, Memphis, or Missouri to come out of this bracket. Because I am sorry, I just don't see where another Final Four team is in the West. My toughest pick in the 1st round was the 4-13 game between the Huskies of Washington and SEC Champions from Mississippi State. I went with Washington just for the fact that I believe the Pac-10 really got disrespected in this tournament this season. Even though the past 3 Final Fours found a Pac-10 team in them (UCLA all 3). The Big East, hasn't had a Final Four team since UCONN's Championship in 2004. Think about that. In the second round, my most intriguing match-up is the Utah State / Missouri match up. For those of you that have been following my NCAA blogs, you all know how high I am on the Aggies from the WAC. And as much as I would love to see a Missouri/Memphis match up in the Sweet Sixteen I think Utah State will make the big push and be the Cinderella in the West Bracket and face Memphis. Talking about the Sweet Sixteen, I now have UCONN facing Big Ten Champion Purdue in the other match up. This will be the Huskies toughest match up thus far, but coach Jim Calhoun will have 4+ days to prepare for the Boilermakers something that favors the Huskies. While in the other game, Memphis' speed and defense will be very overwhelming for the Aggies which leaves us to the Elite Eight game. Not being pushed to the brink since the loss to Syracuse in the Big East tournament will hurt the Huskies and having one day to prepare for a defense like Memphis will also be tough for this Husky team. How do you beat a pressing team? By pressing them. The Tigers will play the disrespect card throughout the tournament like they did a year ago and advance to their second straight Final Four.