Wednesday, March 14, 2012

It's Time To Dance

Good morning everyone.  Since my Peyton Manning to the Arizona Cardinals prediction (which I think should be a mortal lock) is looking shaky, I better hustle and type in these NCAA Tourney predictions.  I hope that all of you had fun or are having fun filling out your brackets on the eve of the first big tournament day.  Let me pass along a great website to you if you want to do research.  I was looking for a site that listed all of the tournament field's records, and this was the best site that I found after checking out several websites earlier today:  www.insidebayarea.com/college-sports/ci_20154081/ncaa-tournament-capsules-all-68-teams
The page is really done well.  My accomplishment for last year's NCAA Tourney was predicting that none of the #1 seeds would reach the Final Four.  I was correct, and only had to sweat one of those teams reaching the Elite Eight.  Let me mention here once again that you can enter a free bracket challenge contest at ESPN (there are several being offered I'm sure).  ESPN's contest allows you to fill out up to 10 brackets.  I am going to give you my predictions based on the bracket that I have completed (which wasn't easy), and then I will go back to ESPN and fill out 9 more brackets to account for spots where I was really stuck.  Let me give you a little list highlighting my upsets...

1)  #12 Virginia Commonwealth upsets #5 Wichita State
2)  #12 Long Beach State upsets #5 New Mexico
3)  #11 North Carolina State upsets #6 San Diego State
4)  #10 Purdue upsets #7 St. Mary's
5)  #10 West Virginia upsets #7 Gonzaga
6)  #9 UConn upsets #8 Iowa State
7)  #9 Saint Louis upsets #8 Memphis

In the second round, I have the two #12 seeds pulling off upsets again, with VCU over Indiana, and Long Beach St. over Louisville.  I also have #5 Vanderbilt beating #4 Wisconsin in this round.  A game that I think will be very interesting is #1 Syracuse vs. #8 Kansas State, although I couldn't pull the trigger on it.  K-State has defeated Missouri twice this season, and they also split with Baylor and Texas.  After I stuck with Syracuse, I did pick them to fall in the next round to Vanderbilt (I am obviously counting on Vandy to continue their hot shooting...).  I also picked Florida State to upset Ohio State in that round.

My Final Four has three teams from the ACC (North Carolina, Duke, & Florida State) and Michigan State.

I have North Carolina beating Duke in the final.

In about 36 hours from now this bracket may be ripped to shreds, but I hope that you enjoy the tournament as much as I do...  :)  I will see you again on Friday - I hope that you enjoy this year's tournament as much I plan to.



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