The NCAA Men’s basketball tournament field is set and it looks like a dandy!

In the MidWest there are two extremely interesting first round games: Arizona (12) vs. Utah (5) and USC (10) vs. Boston College (7). Give me the underdogs in both of those games!

We should also be able to watch two excellent 3rd round games: Lousiville vs. Wake Forest and Michigan State vs. Kansas. I’ll take the favorites in those games by the way.

The West looks to me to be the most uninteresting region by far. I do not see Memphis or Connecticut having any difficulty reaching the Regional Finals, where I expect Connecticut to prevail and advance to face Louisville in the Final Four and defeat the Cardinals by at least 7 points.

In the East region, a second round matchup between Villanova and UCLA should be a fun game to watch with UCLA prevailing. However like the West regiuon, I do not see the top two seeds, in this case Pittsburgh or Duke, having any real trouble advancing to the Regional Finals, where I expect Pitt to dominate the Dukies and win by at least 10.

The South region is extremely interesting in my mind. While I don’t see North Carolina having any trouble steamrolling into the Final Four where they will meet Pittsburgh and we will all be treated to a Tyson Hansborough vs. Dejuan Blair slug fest (give me Blair by a TKO but North Carolina by 4 points), there look to be many interesting games on the slate. In the first round Clemson vs. Michigan looks promising and I would not be surprised to see the Wolverines pull an upset whatsoever. In the second round Syracuse vs. Arizona State should be a great game with the Cuse prevailing but James Harden cementing his stature as a top 5 pick in the upcoming NBA draft (where he would be a perfect fit for the Clippers by the way). In the Regional Semis a Syracuse vs. Oklahoma game would also be wonderfully entertaining and I would again expect the Orangemen to pull out a tight victory but the best player on the court to be from the opposing team with Blake Griffin dominating this time around.

So, who do I like to win it all? Give me North Carolina over Connecticut 80-74.

As for who I like as the top player from each region, here it goes:

MIDWEST: Earl Clark

WEST: Hasheem Thabeet

EAST: Dejuan Blair

SOUTH: Tyler Hansborough

FINAL FOUR MVP: Tyler Hansborough

It’s tournament time … enjoy!

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 10:46 pm and is filed under 2008 NCAA TOURNEY. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.