xubrew

PREDICTIONS OF THE FUTURE:

-When I do the brackets each week, I am not trying to predict what will happen in March. I’m simply providing a check point as to where teams currently stand. Just for fun, I’m going to predict who I think the pod system teams will be and where I think they’ll wind up.

#1 SEEDS:
-Illinois (Indianapolis)
-North Carolina (Charlotte)
-Syracuse (Worcester)
-Duke (Charlotte)


#2 SEEDS:
-Kansas (Tuscon)
-Arizona (Boise)
-Alabama (Nashville)
-Wake Forest (Nashville)


#3 SEEDS:
-Louisville (Cleveland)
-Oklahoma State (Oklahoma City)
-Kentucky (Indianapolis)
-Washington (Boise)


#4 SEEDS:
-Cincinnati (Cleveland)
-Boston College (Worcester)
-Oklahoma (Oklahoma City)
-Wisconsin (Tuscon)


-Every year, someone that makes the pod system is not placed in their geographic region due to the fact that there are teams ahead of them or because they don’t want to remove a team of high local interest from that region (IE Oklahoma and Oklahoma State from Oklahoma City). That is why Wisconsin is in Tuscon instead of Cleveland and Kansas is in Tuscon instead of Oklahoma City. Unfortunately, Arizona cannot play in Tuscon because they are the host team.

-Obviously, this is all just speculation. For all I know, Illinois could lose the rest of their games and miss the tournament altogether, but I will offer some explanation.

I think Alabama is playing fantastic basketball and will probably win the SEC. That would award them the highest seed in the conference. Kentucky is playing well too, but they have been inconsistent, which is typical of young teams. They also did not do a whole lot out of conference. They didn’t play poorly, but they played a bunch of poor teams and that didn’t help their resume a whole lot.

Boston College is currently unbeaten, but I still don’t think they are as good as Syarcuse. Therefore, I don’t think they are going to beat Syracuse. They have had several close calls already and I figure that sooner or later someone will take them down.

Wake Forest really blew it against Georgia Tech the other night. It was a costly loss because there is only room for two of the Carolina teams in Charlotte. Duke also lost to Maryland, but other than that game they have been absolutely sensational this season and there is no reason to think that won’t continue. The same goes for North Carolina. Despite the fact that they have two losses, they have been absolutely fantastic otherwise. The one thing that sorta hurts them is the first loss of the year to Santa Clara, but they have more than enough opportunities to make up for that and as good as they are I think they will.

For those that read the notes yesterday, you know how good I think Louisville is. They are playing so well that they may only lose one more game the whole year.

Arizona is a clutch team. VERY clutch. They overcame a halftime deficit to beat a very good Washington team tonight and that isn’t the first time they’ve played well against a really good team. I think they’ll win the Pac Ten regular season title and get the #2 seed along with it. Washington is very good as well and if this game was in Seattle, the result may have been different. The difference between the two is that Washington has yet to win a really big game on the road. They are certainly a good team, but I don’t think they’ll win the conference.



OTHER NOTES.

-Ivy League play has started. As you all know, it is the only conference that does not have a tournament at the end for the automatic bid, so everything is on the regular season. Princeton appears to be the best team by a long shot. They play their first conference game on Friday against Brown and they play Yale on Saturday. Yale did take Boston College to overtime, but other than that they have been anything but spectacular. Princeton should role in both games. In case you didn’t know, all Ivy League games are on Friday and Saturday so the players will miss a minimal number of classes. Most teams don’t go deep into their benches either, so playing two games in two days every week is libel to be exhausting.

-Stanford won on Thursday night against Oregon State to continue their winning streak, but barely. They led Oregon State by 18 in the second half, but the Beavers came back and took the lead in the final three minutes, but Stanford pulled it out. They have undergone one of the biggest midseason turnarounds of anyone this year. They began the season at 6-7, had no quality wins, two bad losses, and lost their first three conference games. They have won their last five games to improve to 11-7, picked up two quality wins (including one against Arizona), and are now in third place in the Pac Ten Standings behind Arizona and Washington. The Cardinal face Oregon at home on Saturday. Oregon is a team that has done the exact opposite of what Stanford has done. They got off to a great start this year, but have lost four of their last five games, have plummeted down the Pac Ten standings, and if things continue it will be five out of six after Saturday.

-Old Dominion, Pacific and Vermont all have something in common. They currently appear to be in a position to get an at large. However, with their conferences being as weak as they are, their RPIs will continue to go down even if they continue to win. That’s not the only problem. While several other teams are able to acquire quality wins in conference, these teams cannot. No one is in the RPI top fifty. In fact, only two teams in the America East other than Vermont and one team in the CAA other than Old Dominion are in the RPI top 100. That means, any loss would go down as a bad loss. Last year we saw a Utah State team go 25-3 and not get an at large. Out of those 25 wins, only three were against the RPI top 100 and all three losses were bad. Had they won just one more game, they would have been in for sure. It just goes to show you that there is such a small margin for error for these teams. Pacific and Vermont will both play in the Bracket Buster and that will greatly help out their resumes because it will boost their RPI and give them a shot at a quality win. Old Dominion will not, so even just one loss could mean that they’ll need to fall back on their conference tournament to get them in. It has to be highly frustrating for a team that dominates a conference, but one loss in the conference tournament keeps them out of the NCAA tournament, but unless these three teams run the table that could potentially happen.

-I don’t mean for this to be a journal for mid-majors and only mid-majors, but I’ve got one more thing I’d like to say about the mid-majors this year. First off, I don’t really like the term “mid-major.” It’s not a noun or a category. It’s an adjective. Calling a team a mid-major is just as descriptive as calling a team “good.” Well, what does that mean?? In saying that, that doesn’t mean I still don’t use the term myself from time to time.

Anyway, back to the point, not many mid-majors have impressed me this year. Entering conference play it appeared as though we had several teams that could really do some potential damage come March, but now I'm not so sure. Every year it seems as though there are about three or four that if given the chance to play in a major conference would do very well. Last year Southern Illinois would have probably finished in the top half of the Big Ten, and Gonzaga could have very easily won the Pac Ten. Nevada proved themselves worthy when they beat Michigan State and Gonzaga in the NCAA tournament, and really took Georgia Tech to the wire in the Sweet Sixteen. However, this year I haven’t seen any that I thought were consistent and solid. Teams like Southern Illinois, Wichita State, Northern Iowa, Gonzaga, Pacific and UTEP have shown that they can be outstanding basketball teams at times. However, they’ve also shown that they can be mediocre basketball teams at other times. With the exception of Pacific who plays in a VERY weak Big West conference, all have struggled in conference. They’ve either lost two sub 500 teams or struggled to beat them more than they should have. UTEP barely beat SMU tonight. If they were to come out and play like that against a middle of the road Big Twelve team they’d get their clocks cleaned. In fact, when they faced Texas Tech earlier this year, they did get their clocks cleaned.

I’m not saying that someone bringing their A game to the NCAA tournament and going on a big run is out of the question. I’m just saying that these teams don’t bring their A game as much as they need to right now. They don’t have the margin of error that some of the teams from bigger conferences have simply because they don’t have as many opportunities to resuscitate their resumes once they take a hit. Northern Iowa has pretty much taken themselves out of the at-large picture. It won’t take but two or three losses for that to happen to any of these teams.



-The highlighted games for this weekend will be posted before Saturday and the next installment of the Bracket Projections will be posted late Sunday night.

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IT'S MILLER TIME!!!