My bracket

The madness begins tomorrow.

There’s nothing like the first two days of the NCAA Tournament. 12 hours each day of basketball. Noon to midnight. Upsets, blowouts, close games, you name it. The first two days are the best days of the tournament and some of the best days in sports.

Unfortunately, I have to wait until the last games on Friday to see Maryland play. I figured that might be the case when I saw they had to travel to Spokane, Washington.

I’ve never been all the great with my brackets as a whole. My greatest claim to fame with the brackets is that in eighth grade, I won my middle school’s bracket competition for a certain section of eighth graders. I also picked Florida to win each time they’ve won recently, and I picked Kansas to win last season.

But my first and second rounds are usually way off. I always pick the wrong upsets.

With that in mind, I’ll go through my notable aspects of my bracket for the first weekend.

I’ll start with Maryland. I like them to beat Houston in the first round, with Maryland’s edge coming from an advantage in regards to physicality in the paint. I think Maryland slows down Houston’s run-and-gun pace with a lot of looks inside to Jordan Williams and drives to the hoop by Greivis Vasquez and Landon Milbourne. This will get Maryland to the foul line a bunch.

In the second round, I have Maryland beating Michigan State. I haven’t seen Michigan State play at all this season, so this is just a hunch. But I do hope Maryland’s seniors go out with at least a Sweet 16 run.

As far as upsets in the first round, I think the one game that screams “upset” to me is the game between Notre Dame (six seed) and Old Dominion (11). I like Old Dominion in that one because Notre Dame is, well, Notre Dame.

The 10 seeds I like in the first round are Georgia Tech (over Oklahoma State), Missouri (over Clemson), and St. Mary’s (over Richmond). I like what I’ve seen out of Georgia Tech late in the season and I’m not big on Clemson. I’ve never seen St. Mary’s or Richmond play, so that’s just a random hunch.

The one upset I keep hearing is “Cornell (12) over Temple (5).” I’ve been burnt by Temple the last two years, as I’ve put them in the Sweet 16 each year. I’ll admit that I had some major Christmas fever.

And this year, I’m still sticking with Temple. They have a better team than the past two years (a five seed might have even been too low for the Owls) despite the loss of Dionte Christmas to graduation. I’m putting Temple in the Sweet 16 again. I’m sticking with them until I get it right.

My 12 over 5 upset happens to be UTEP over Butler because UTEP is a cool name.

I’m tempted to pick Siena (13) over Purdue (4) in the first round with Robbie Hummel out for Purdue, but I’ll stick with Purdue until the second round, where I think they’ll lose to Texas A&M.

The rest of my first weekend looks pretty standard. One thing I will point out is that if there is a miracle 16-over-1 or 15-over-2, it will be Todd Bozeman’s Morgan State team over West Virginia. Keep in mind that I really like West Virginia (I have them in my Final Four). But Bozeman has quite the program stirring at Morgan, and I can guarantee you that West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins isn’t happy about getting matched up with Morgan.

Onto my Sweet 16.

My Sweet 16 is the following: Kansas, Maryland, Georgetown, Ohio State, Syracuse, Vanderbilt, Xavier, Kansas State, Kentucky, Temple, Marquette, West Virginia, Duke, Texas A&M, Baylor and Villanova.

Back to Maryland. I like Kansas to beat Maryland in the Sweet 16 because Kansas is better. Also in the Midwest region, I like Georgetown to beat Ohio State because, well, I don’t really know why.

The rest of my Sweet 16 victors go according to form, as the rest of my Elite 8 are one seeds and two seeds: Syracuse, Kansas State, Kentucky, West Virginia, Duke and Villanova. I always get burnt in my brackets when I try to guess the bracket buster. Usually, just going with the one and two seeds leads to fairly accurate brackets. It might not be as fun, though.

It would be awesome to pick a 12 seed to the Elite Eight or Final Four and get it right, though. If I had picked George Mason a few years back to go to the Final Four, that would have been awesome. I would still be boasting about it.

In my Final Four, I have a couple of two seeds and a couple of one seeds. I have Syracuse, Kansas, West Virginia, and Villanova. Yes, a bit of a Big East flavor is in the air.

I like Villanova a lot in this tournament for one reason – their draw. I think Villanova might have been the biggest winners of Selection Sunday. Not only do they get a seed a bit too high (in my opinion), they also get the friendliest bracket. If it comes down to Villanova and Duke in the Elite 8, Villanova will beat Duke by double digits.

I also like West Virginia a lot in this tournament because of how well they played down the stretch in winning the Big East tournament. I’m picking West Virginia to beat Kentucky in the Elite 8 because Kentucky head coach John Calipari creeps me out.

As for my other two Final Four teams, the resumes of Kansas and Syracuse speak for themselves.

In the Final Four, I have Syracuse beating Kansas and Villanova beating West Virginia. No rhyme or reason to these picks. The only teams I’ve really seen consistently are ACC teams, and most of those teams, I’ve seen in person.

In the final, I have Syracuse beating Villanova. I keep thinking back to how Syracuse dismantled Villanova in the Carrier Dome and how they exposed Villanova’s lack of a big man. And I also keep thinking back to how Syracuse got beaten by Le Moyne in an exhibition game early in the season. I think it’s some sort of bizarro world omen.