The Madness Has Begun

In some people's minds the official start of March Madness is this week with the announcement of the field of 65. But really the madness has been going on since at least Thursday with the start of the Big East tourney, if not even earlier. A few quick thoughts before I get into the specifics of the brackets. I think Tyler Hansbrough averaged at least two elbows/slaps to opponents faces during the ACC tournament. He pulled a Kobe on Jared Dudley during the semi-final and pretty much intentionally punched Dudley in the face under the guise of getting tangled up, then pulled a similar, although more incidental, move on Brandon Costner in the final. To me this is just more evidence that when Gerald Henderson broke his nose, that was no accident. The whole ACC Tournament showed two things, first, UNC was by far the best team in the league, and second, the league was very deep. I feel like if FSU were in any other league, they be dancing right now, unfortunately you can't take two thirds of any league, no matter how good they are at this point.

The highlight of this weekend to me was the crazy finishes in the mid and low majors, the league tournaments in these conferences really are a microcosm of the National Championship Tournament. These teams are fighting for their lives and just making the tourney is the equivalent of winning the big dance. The best finish came in the MAC where Miami of Ohio hit a miracle shot to win a berth. The only low major game that I watched completely was Albany's upset of Vermont up in Burlington. The level of play is obviously noticeably worse, but the action can be really intense and the effort is the same if not better form any game you watch all season.

OK, onto my review of the seedings. The most important part of the selection show is of course the snubs, because their season just ended when they thought they still had a shot. I'm especially sensitive to their plight, I remember in 2003 when BC seemingly had done enough to get into the tournament, they had ten wins in the Big East during the regular season and had made it to the semi-finals of the Big East tourney, as if they needed more to fill out their resume, they beat NC State, another bubble team, handily on the road and they had beaten UConn by 20 in Storrs. But the selection came and went without BC's name being called, as you can tell I still have bad memories of it to this day. The biggest shocker today, Syracuse was left out. The Orange had seemingly locked up a spot with a huge win over Georgetown a couple weeks back, but now the Orange's season is really over, believe me, they don;t care that much about the NIT. Not as surprising was FSU being left out. But they seemed to deserve it more than a lot of the other bubble teams . They upset Florida, the team who was named the top seed overall by the selection committee, and they also won at Duke, which was still a decent feet this year. The Seminoles didn;t lose to anyone outside of the RPI top 50, but unfortunately the ACC was so deep this year that they were the eighth best team in a twelve team league, and the committee didn;t want to take that many teams from one league.

As for the teams that got in, my hometown Eagles got the seed they probably deserved, and they should be able to beat Texas Tech in the first round, but it's no sure thing. Their reward if they can beat Texas Tech? Getting beat up by Georgetown. I guess the NCAA wants them to get eliminated by one of their former Big East rivals every year, as they were by Villanova last year. Best case scenario would have been to get a six seed, and hope to play one of the weaker three seeds in the second round, but all in all they'd have to view a second round exit as a nice accomplishment. speaking of Georgetown, I've decided that the Big East was a one team league similar to the way the ACC was dominated by one team. Georgetown seemingly got the best draw out of anyone in terms of having an easy ride to the Elite 8. If they're playing against UNC for a chance at the final four, I'll have a lot of trouble choosing who to root for. They're probably my two least favorite teams right now, the one highlight might come when Tyler Hansbrough tries to pull his junk and either Pat Ewing Jr. or Roy Hibbert knocks him out. I know it's a long shot, but really it's the only scenario I'd enjoy. By the way, the dumbest comment of the day came on ESPN, Digger Phelps said that Georgetown would sneak up on everyone. Who the hell are they gonna sneak up on you moron, they're one of the favorites to win the whole thing, but you think they're gonna sneak up on everyone. Why don;t you just concentrate on finding a puce Highliter to match your new tie, and let the real analysts say something.

A few other notes, how did Florida get ranked as the number 1 overall team? Are we just ignoring their three game losing streak because they dominated their weak opponents in the SEC tournament. They let recent performance greatly dictate every other seed in the tourney, but not this one for some reason. Ohio State deserved that honor, especially because they dominated a worthy team, Wisconsin, in their conference tourney. I was gonna make my predictions for the Final four, but I'm not very good at that sort of thing, and I'd probably just end up naming the four number 1 seeds. I will predict that UNC will meet Texas in the sweet 16, leading to a ton of people predicting Texas to win, but UNC will handle them easily. I'll also predict a couple upsets for Georgia Tech against UNLV and Wisconsin, and maybe even a trip to the elite 8. I'm also going to begrudgingly predict a run for Duke, I'm not sold on either Pitt or UCLA in the tournament. Of course I made these predictions about UCLA last year. My last prediction is that I'll play hookie on Thursday and Friday afternoon.

Can;t wait til Thursday at noon, til then...

-Bender Out