If there’s one region on my bracket that’s giving me major headaches right now, it’s the Southeast. The region has some incredibly weak top seeds (#1 Pitt, which always seems to be a paper tiger come tournament time; #2 Florida, grossly overseeded for no discernible reason; and #3 BYU, struggling without Brandon Davies) and five of the strongest mid-majors in the entire tournament (#8 Butler, #9 Old Dominion, #11 Gonzaga, #12 Utah State and #13 Belmont), the latter two just criminally underseeded (and forced to potentially face each other in a #12 vs. #13, mid-on-mid-violence Round of 32 game). Combined, there’s a 17.1% chance that one of those five mid-major teams will reach the Final Four, according to Ken Pomeroy’s log5 stats, with the #12 Aggies (6.4%), #13 Bruins (4.6%) and #11 Zags (3.9%) actually having the fifth-, sixth- and seventh-best odds in the region, respectively, trailing only the top 4 seeds. All of which adds up to, for me, the following hot mess of a nonsensical, pie-in-the-sky, NOT-GONNA-HAPPEN bracket:
As I tweeted with that photo, “Is there a support group for this? #OfficePoolSuicide #CantHelpMyself.”
Then again, it doesn’t exactly help dissuade me from this lunacy when mainstream sports media guys are basically saying, yeah, that could totally happen:
I’m really not sure what to do with my bracket here. Do I pick one of the mid-majors, most likely Belmont, to reach the Final Four? Do I bank on another round of Tom Izzo Magic? (Pomeroy’s stats answer that one with a resounding “no.”) Do I go with dangerous, possibly-peaking-at-the-right-time Kansas State — but: USU! — or perhaps St. John’s or (gulp) UCLA? Or do I pick some early upsets, then bank on one of the surviving favorites to roll through the shattered bracket that’s left after a wild first weekend? But if the latter, which favorite? I have zero faith in either Pittsburgh or Florida, and I’m highly skeptical of BYU without Davies. But then, I (like most of the rest of the country) didn’t have much faith in Duke last year, and yet they successfully navigated a highly favorable bracket to reach the Final Four, then knocked off WVU and Butler to win the whole thing, despite having pretty clearly not even deserved to be a #1 seed in the first place! There are plenty of similar examples of imperfect high seeds taking advantage of upset-filled brackets, and this could well be another. Will paper-tiger Pitt or overseeded Florida or undermanned/oversexed* BYU be “this year’s Duke”? Ugh. I don’t know. I’ll be wrestling with this one for the next 24 hours, I think.
*by BYU standards
Hmmmmm…. upon reflection, picking St. John’s, who I pegged as a sleeper Final Four team weeks ago in a never-published “bracketology” piece for DU’s newspaper, has a certain appeal. That way, if Gonzaga beats them in the game I’m attending Thursday, I can just root for the Zags without regard for my bracket — and if Gonzaga loses, I’ll at least have my bracket to fall back on.
Hmmmm.
Go with the Johnnies. Losing Kennedy definitely hurts their appeal as a sleeper (they were as high as #4 going into the Big East tournament), but I currently have them making it out of their pod, possibly beating Florida in the Sweet 16, and maybe even going to the FF depending on how many times I redo my bracket this afternoon. You’re right, this region is a killer…