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Tomorrow begins the magical time of the year known as March Madness. Everyone including that executive assistant who doesn’t know her Gonzagas from her Dukes is filling out brackets for the office pool.
To help everyone fill out their brackets, here are some helpful hints.
1. No Final Fours since the tournament was expanded to 64 teams have featured all #1 seeds. That means if you have North Carolina, Kansas, Memphis and UCLA as the last four teams standing, you are wrong. While there’s always a chance for it happening, it definitely will not happen this year. The four #1 seeds all have flaws that can be exposed during the tournament. For instance North Carolina doesn’t play a lick of defense, and Memphis can’t shoot a free throw to save their lives.
2. No 16 seeds have ever beat a 1 seed. It just won’t happen. The disparity of a 1 seed and a 16 seed is just too much to overcome.
3. The more you use logic, the less likely you will win. I can give thousands of reasons why all 1 seeds will be in the Final Four, but as said above it just won’t happen. I had many reasons in 2006 why 11-seed George Mason would go out in the first round, but they ended up in the Final Four. That’s why that executive assistant will win the office pool.
There are many more suggestions I could lay down here, but that will involve doing a lot of homework. Like how guard play is very crucial to winning in the tournament. If you want to look at assists-turnover ratio of every guard in the field of 64, be my guest. But as I stated in #3, you will most likely be wrong.
That being said here’s my bracket for all to laugh at.
My notable upsets for this weekend: #12 George Mason over #5 Notre Dame; #11 St. Joes over #6 Oklahoma; #12 Villanova over #5 Clemson; #10 Davidson over #7 Gonzaga; #10 Arizona over #7 West Virginia; #10 St. Marys over #7 Miami (FL).
My Final Four are Louisville, Georgetown, Stanford and UCLA with UCLA winning it all. But more on that later.
Good luck on your brackets!
AP Photo by Kevork Djansezian
