March Madness

This is my favorite time of year. I love the passion, the effort, the crowds, the great play, the amazing finishes. It's win or your done. Well, not quite yet for some teams, but for others they are fight for their lives and a chance to make it to the Big Dance. I just can't keep from watching all the games. If I could I would take the days off work to allow me to just soak it all in.

One of the most important things to winning a national title is match-ups so without the brackets I can't yet predict who will be the national champion. I will tell you though that the two teams I think are the best in the country and they are Kansas and UCLA. They having everything you want in a team. Both play great perimeter defense and have good to great players on the inside. UCLA has a better post presence in Kevin Love, but Kansas has more depth in the post.UCLA has some great perimeter players, but they sometimes struggle to hit an outside shot. Kansas is a better shooting team. But they are both terrific teams and I would be hard pressed to pick a winner between the two teams.

I am really excited for BYU and their chances of making the Sweet 16. Of course it will depend on the seed and their draw, but they should get at least a 6 seed as long as they can win the MWC tournament. Maybe even a 5 seed, but that makes me worry because there is always a 5-12 upset. If Plaisted can make his free throws and the cougars play some defense, I think they have a great chance to win a couple of games in the Big Dance. (And Tavernari either has to make everything he shoots or, as I would prefer, he needs to shoot the ball less).

I have also decided to try a new way of predicting games in one of my brackets. I am going to compare each contest by some team stats. A team gets one point for each category that they are better than the other. The team with the most points is going to be the team I pick to win the game. This is more of an experiment than anything else. I just want to see what happens.

I will certainly have more to write as the time grows closer.