March Madness, and my lack of knowledge on the top NCAA teams

There was a point in my life where I could have told you the names of the starting 5 players for all the schools in the NCAA tournament each year. Now that I am the father of 4 children, it seems there is less time to watch and study college basketball. I do wish I followed more closely though. I often think about setting my Tivo to record basketball games instead of Survivor, or Heroes, or endless repeats of Good Eats and South Park. The drama of the college basketball season far outweighs the drama of anything that the major networks puts on prime time TV.

What I love so much about March Madness is that unlike the major pro sports when the brackets are set they are set in stone. In the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA the best team in the playoffs record wise will always play the worst team in the playoffs record wise. But, in the NCAA tournament if you are lucky enough to have a crappy team beat a really good team that seemed to be headed your way, good on ya. It's just drama on the highest level, a single game can make or break a team, even a little team. And that's what's great about the tourney, little schools get lucky, or get the right match up and just crush a team that should have walked all over them.

The brackets are going to be announced this Sunday, so I felt I owed it to myself to learn a little bit about who looks good and who looks bad. So here is my half-hearted, last minute, and more than likely shameful analysis of the NCAA tournament this year.

First, the bubble teams, these are the teams that my or my not get in. The bubble teams with the best chance it seems are, Michigan State University, Southern California, Syracuse, Texas Tech, and Xavier. MSU has no "bad" losses, meaning no home losses against teams rated lower than 50, or road losses to teams rated outside the top 100. They also have 5 "quality" wins, meaning wins at home against teams rated 50 or higher, or road wins against teams rated 100 or higher. They beat Wisconsin at a time when they were rated #1 in the nation. All the other teams on the good side of the bubble have at least one bad loss. Syracuse will probably be the lowest rated of these teams to make it, they are sitting at 50 right now, but a big win in the first round of their division tournament, despite losing in the quarterfinals to Norte Dame. They have also won 6 of their last 8 games, a surge that should help them make the cut.

This next group of teams are little less likely to make it, but they do have a chance. They would be, Air Force, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Stanford, and West Virginia. I think the team in this group with the best chance would be Florida State, they have a few big "quality" wins namely Duke, Clemson, and Providence. But they must beat North Carolina to make it, the only other time they played them this season NC beat up on them pretty badly, 84-58. Well looking at scores while writing this I see that NC did it to the Seminoles again beating them 73-58 today, so it looks like FSU's bubble just burst.

Then we have the teams that don't have much hope left. Arkansas, Drexel, Georgia, Kansas State, and Michigan. There is no way that Michigan is getting in, no way. They had a great chance to make it in the Big 10 tourney, but fell apart down the stretch against #1 Ohio State, I think a win in that game and they may have made it in. But, 21-11 overall record and only going 8-8 in the Big 10 will not get you in unless you get a really big quality win, and they let it slip out of their hands. A team that does look good here though is Arkansas, they beat Vanderbilt in their regular season final, and have them all tied up in the second half in today's SEC tournament match up.

That will have to do for my bubble coverage, as soon as the brackets get announced I'll sit down, do my research and let you all know who to pick your office pool. Just make sure I get some props when I help you make everyone in your bracket pool look foolish. K.