Wednesday, March 15, 2006
On the EVE of Madness
Well, with less than 24-hours to go before the BIG DANCE tips - off on Thursday, how many tweaks have you made to your bracket (s) over the past few days? I've been working on mine for a few hours this week. This is a good link if you're desperate and ignorant of the schools making up the 64 teams this year. Joe Lunardi usually does a good job with his picks and seedings. He claims to have correctly picked 10 of the last 16 possible FINAL 4's. I scrolled through his list and find some of his picks to be a little 'interesting'. Oh well, we'll learn more tomorrow I guess. I'll have to check - back on Friday night to see how he's doing.
Time for some useful numbers. Never in the 84 matchups since 1985 has a #16 seed beaten a #1 seed. Last time I checked that's an NCAA Tournament winning % of 0. While #1 seeds clip - along at a rate of 80%.. Sure UCLA and Kentucky have the most titles with 11 and 7, respectively; but don't look for either team to be cutting the nets down in Indy this year.
Don't discount my ILLINI this year. Sure they got the bum seed in San Diego as a #4. I'm not too worried about their opening round game against Air Force, but a second - round matchup against either UTAH STATE or Washington could be tough. I see my team making it out of San Diego to Washington DC where they play a good game against UCONN. Can they win against the HUSKIES? YES. But will they win? Hmmm - not going to disclose here.
Time for some useful numbers. Never in the 84 matchups since 1985 has a #16 seed beaten a #1 seed. Last time I checked that's an NCAA Tournament winning % of 0. While #1 seeds clip - along at a rate of 80%.. Sure UCLA and Kentucky have the most titles with 11 and 7, respectively; but don't look for either team to be cutting the nets down in Indy this year.
Don't discount my ILLINI this year. Sure they got the bum seed in San Diego as a #4. I'm not too worried about their opening round game against Air Force, but a second - round matchup against either UTAH STATE or Washington could be tough. I see my team making it out of San Diego to Washington DC where they play a good game against UCONN. Can they win against the HUSKIES? YES. But will they win? Hmmm - not going to disclose here.
