Alex Kreitman - Stealing signs

I do this every year. I fill out my bracket then make last-minute changes before Thursday’s first round games approach. This year is no different.

My bracket is complete, with winners for every game, but I’m not so confident I’ve made the correct choices. But who ever is?

After talking with my friend Ben, we agreed that the NCAA Tournament is called March Madness for a reason. It’s the tournament that has experts’ heads spinning because they don’t even know who to pick.

Of course there will always be the favorites, the No. 1’s with only a few losses, but you never know who will rise up and beat the heavyweights. It’s anyone’s game. One and done. That’s what the excitement is all about.

I always spend way too much time filling out my bracket and for what reason? Ben said it took him 10 minutes, my Dad said it took him four. It took me three hours and I’m probably still not done. Kind of sad I know.

But here’s my thought process. I like to look up and down rosters and compare big wins and horrible losses. I like to look at both teams and find a factor that can make me pick it to move on.

For instance, if a team has a strong center or is good on the boards, and another team has weak rebounding, I almost always go for the team that is good on the glass. Reason being, that teams often start cold in the tournament because of nerves and things like that. So if you can’t rebound and the other guys can, you’re in trouble.

I also like a team with a dominant scorer. If a player is averaging more than 20 points per game, my eyes light up and traditionally I have that team heading far.

Then of course, you’ve got to pick some sleepers, you just have to. You can’t expect to have a successful bracket without going out on a limb and taking a 12 seed or a 10 somewhere down the line. My sleeper pick for the Sweet 16 this year is Temple.

I don’t think many other people will have this pick, which is good for an edge. Also, Temple has two excellent scorers which tend to energize their offense. Plus they play a streaky Michigan State team in the opener which has been overrated all season and rides on the shoulders of Drew Neitzel. When Neitzel struggles, the Spartans lose.

But it really doesn’t matter who you think is going to win because it’s all luck. I’ve known past girlfriends who have just picked which team’s mascot they liked better and they usually do pretty well. It doesn’t take an expert for this tournament. There are too many unknowns to really make an educated guess, so you’re better off tossing it up to luck. But I never seem to listen to that message so I’ll stress about filling out a stellar bracket anyway.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 10:05 am and is filed under Blogs, College basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.