NCAA Brackets Update

NCAA Brackets Update - opening round picks

1)  7/8 East region.  Harvard loses to Vandy.  Frank Friedman, Esq., Harvard & Vandy Law, messes me up here, as does a fine Vanderbilt squad.  Maybe his wife is happy.  

2)  5/8 Midwest region - Creighton upsets Alabama.  Ohio beats Michigan.  Temple, in one of the worst losses ever by a Temple team, has USF down by more than ten, goes into the locker room with a half-time lead, and proceeds to fall apart in the 2d half and lose going away to USF, a #12 seed that was tired from a play-in game.  If Temple wins, they have an easy game v. Ohio and they're into the Sweet Sixteen.  At this point, with Temple having exited in the first game of the NCAA for the fourth or fifth time in five or six tries, you really have to question whether Fran Dunphy understands what it takes to advance past the first round of the NCAA.  No one is saying he's a bad coach, but he is no where close to John Chaney in terms of advancing in the NCAA, and this is a team that is about to go over to the Big East.

3)  5/8 South region - Iowa State upsets Connecticut.  This could have been foreseen in light of Coach Calhoun's health problems all year long, but still a bracket buster.  Colorado over UNLV.  Doesn't matter because Baylor will obliterate Colorado.  Lehigh over Duke.  I love how little mattress-rolling-down-the-hill Lehigh got past big bad Duke.  The Patriot League over the ACC?  Are you kidding me?  Seriously, this just may show how weak Duke was this year, and therefore that Temple's upset of Duke didn't prove as much as we thought.  The funny thing is, Lehigh actually matches up with Xavier better than they do with Duke.

4)  6/8 West region - St. Louis bumps Memphis.  I always liked that St. Louis has a fine History dept and especially that they have a fine Byzantine Studies department.  But they will be destroyed by the Spartans of Michigan State.  Norfolk State upsets the Tigers of Missouri.  WHATTTT???.  Perhaps the biggest bracket buster.  While you want to say Florida will win next, you really want to root for little Norfolk State....

OVERALL, FIRST ROUND - 23/32.  NOT SHABBY.

will re-evaluate after the rest of the weekend is over.  Obviously Harvard & Temple will not be making it to the Final Four.....but Vandy suddenly looks very serious and has the same road Harvard had.  The Midwest looks like Kansas and North Carolina will re-assert their traditional dominance, and I will stay with Kentucky in the South and Louisville in the West, though of course Michigan State & Florida are both excellent.

--art kyriazis