Thursday, March 22, 2018

Taking A Mulligan Just Like Everybody Else On My Brackets

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The first weekend of this year’s NCAA tournament was pure chaos seeing a 1-seed lose to a 16-seed for the first time in tournament history when UMBC beat No. 1 Virginia.  None of the top four seeds (Virginia, Cincinnati, Tennessee, Arizona) in the South Region advanced to the Sweet 16. In past years, the top three seeds in a region have failed to advance, but never the top four. 
The 11-seed Loyola-Chicago Ramblers and Syracuse Orange are the only double-digit seeds to reach the Sweet 16. Loyola advanced to Atlanta by upsetting Miami and Tennessee while Syracuse got to the dance in Omaha by beating Arizona State and TCU.
Mike DeCourcy, smarty-pants “expert” at Sporting News, is picking Kentucky over K-State, Nevada over Loyola, the Zags over the Noles, Michigan over Texas A&M, ‘Nova over the Mountaineers, Texas Tech over the Boilermakers, Jayhawks over Clemson and Duke over ‘Cuse.
Most of the sports “experts” seem to agree the Final Four will be whittled down to Kentucky, Michigan, Villanova and Duke.
On Friday, ‘Cuse takes on Duke. Syracuse dumped the Big East Conference to join the ACC Conference five years ago.  They got a big payout from the ACC to make the switch.  Ever since then the school has seemed to think they could establish the kind of rivalry they had with Georgetown and UConn.  Don’t make me laugh.
The Orange are not a blueblood basketball team.  Nothing, and I do mean nothing, can supplant the rivalry between Duke and Carolina.
‘Cuse is an 11.5 point underdog for Friday’s game.  They were 68 out of 68 to get into the NCAA Tournament.
Duke has held all eleven of its opponents to just 8 baskets from downtown and will easily brush Syracuse aside in its quest to reach the Final Four.
Everybody hates Duke.  I think Coach K is headed for a sixth national championship.

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