It’s the year of picking dangerously in pools
It was tough choosing a No. 1 all year; nothing has changed now that March is here
Picking a winner in a March Madness bracket is very rarely a straightforward thing, but it might be at the full degree of difficulty this year.
A year ago, the Kentucky Wildcats were the heaviest of favourites, an undefeated behemoth that shredded its way through its competition — all the way until April 4, when the Wisconsin Badgers stunned them in the tournament’s championship game.
But this season has been for equal opportunists, with the No. 1 spot changing seven times in the AP’s Top 25 poll, starting with pre-season favourite Kentucky’s fall from grace. The USA Today coaches’ poll has had 10 No.1 changes since the pre-season.
Michigan State has shown the closest thing to consistency in the rankings, with four weeks at the top of each poll. Kansas landed in the No. 1 spot in the AP poll this past week, giving it four weeks there throughout the season.
Last year was the perfect example of this tournament being unpredictable, even when the whole college basketball season led us to believe it would be the most predictable thing ever. This year it feels like you could throw your bracket in a blender and make your picks off of what comes out first.
Some things almost never change in the tournament, though.
The matchup of fifth and 12th seeds is routinely an upset hotbed, even if Raptors rookie guard Delon Wright will happily argue that the No. 5 seed is not cursed. His fifth-seeded Utah Utes took out the No. 12 Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks in the first round of last year’s tournament, part of their run to the Sweet 16.
But it was just the fourth time since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in1985 that all four No. 5 seeds advanced. And there was plenty of upset talk before the Utes’ opener.
“Some analyst said we’d be upset and our coach used that for motivation,” Wright said. “(Stephen F. Austin) upset someone that was a five the year before, so coach had told us about it.”
Indeed, the Lumberjacks took out Virginia Commonwealth a year earlier. And their upset wasn’t unusual. In 124 games between the fifth and twelfth seeds, the No. 5 seed has 44 wins; that’s just 36 per cent.
“It’s a high per cent,” Wright said. “From that point on, other teams’ odds get lower.”
It’s almost an unfortunate situa- tion. Your team works hard, has a great year and then lands the five-seed and gets the basketball world watching, assuming that you’ve got a good shot at falling in the first round.
“I wouldn’t say there was pressure because we were supposed to win,” Wright said. “But everyone picked them to win.”
The 12th seed doesn’t have much longevity after the early upset, making it to the Elite Eight just once, where No. 12 Missouri lost to No. 2 Oklahoma in 2002.
One key piece of advice: If you want your bracket to survive, it’s best to check your loyalties at the door. As hard as it might be for a diehard Duke fan to accept that North Carolina has a good team this year, it’s better to objectively project how far they could go, as opposed to wishing them out in the first round.
If Raptors coach Dwane Casey can put aside the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry, you should be able to as well.
“That doesn’t bother me, pulling and cheering for different teams,” said Casey, who won a national championship with the Wildcats as a player in 1978. He coached as an assistant there the following two years and from 1985 to 1989.
“I (cheer) for coaches as much as anything else. This is an exciting time of year as far as picking teams, it’s something that’s fun and that’s why March Madness is what it is.”
For what it’s worth, Casey said he’s never actually filled out a bracket at this time of year. He does love March, though.
“It’s the best time of the year,” he said. “I try to watch as much as I can.”