What we should be rooting for is for Michigan St to beat Purdue twice, once @MSU and once in the Big 10 tourney. That should send Purdue down to the 2-seed line and Michigan St back up to the 1-seed line but out West since Duke would have the head-to-head win on MSU. (Now, obviously, Duke has to take care of business ourselves, which probably includes winning the ACC tourney, in order to be a 1 seed.)
East (Boston) |
South (Atlanta) |
Midwest (Omaha) |
West (L.A.) |
1. Villanova |
1. Virginia |
1. Duke |
1. MSU |
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2. Purdue |
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x. Arizona |
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4. Kentucky |
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Others have mentioned this before, but preseason rankings should be respected when filling out your brackets.
Nate Silver wrote an article about that here. Overachievers like Purdue (preseason #20) tend to regress to the mean in the NCAA tournament. Although it's more a mixed bag, underachievers like Arizona or Kentucky also tend to regress to the mean.
If you had told me before the season started that
our two preseason co-favorites, MSU and Arizona, would be stuck in the same bracket out West, all the way across the overall bracket from Duke; that Duke would be a #1 seed with Purdue our #2 seed; that the #1 seed we'd be paired with would be unranked UVA (even though I knew they were underrated); I would have taken that in a heartbeat. Note: we also avoid the Kentucky landmine here;
the Wildcats (preseason #5) are bound to be a much better team at the end of the season than they were at the beginning.
So, that's what I'm rooting for. Nothing too specific or anything ;-) (Gawd, I love talking bracketology. It's so stupid in many ways, but I can't help it).