March Madness is always full of upsets, and the twelfth seeded Wolfpack just won the Mountain West championship. “I mean anything I can do to get the ideal bracket, I mean thats worth some coin now”. And the difference between a No.1 and No.2 seed is very thin.
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The south region is perhaps the most wide open of the four, as top seed North Carolina has underperformed on the road this year. The last three winners were flawless starting in the Elite Eight. So what do we know!?
Nothing much to say about the No. 1 seeds of Kansas and Gonzaga. So here is what others, and myself, are saying might happen this year….and if they do we will see some awesome basketball.
But let’s take a look at some notable games, and possible upsets, in the upcoming tournment. And the 2017 edition of March Madness is a ideal jumping off point.
-No. 1 Villanova vs. The other First Four games will consist of the third-to-last at-large team on the seed list playing the fourth-to-last at-large team on the seed list, as well as seed 65 versus 66; and seed 67 versus 68).
So go ahead and pencil Villanova in to win another title. While it’s great cheering for an underdog and I did pick CSU winning a first round game in their last NCAA appearance, I wasn’t entirely sure they would be able to do it. Both schools have faced tough competition thus far, and this game is expected to go down to the wire on Tuesday night. Since these play-in games were introduced in 2011, a team that has emerged from the First Four has won at least one additional game in the tournament, with 11-seed Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) reaching the Final Four in 2011. They face off on Wednesday. Obviously, their relatively weak conference schedule is scaring away a lot of people, despite their general dominance this season (even against some strong non-conference opponents).
At 12:30 Saturday, one of the nation’s perennial powers Stanford will play New Mexico State.
1 Gonzaga over 12 Princeton. Kansas State or the victor of Wednesday’s Providence-USC bubble game will both try to keep this streak going. In recent years the Rams have been known to get hot late in the season and pull off some pretty big upsets when the big dance comes around.
WEST: No. 3 Florida State (25-8) vs. Also another Thursday matchup.
11 Xavier over 6 Maryland. Expect a thriller on Thursday.
7 SC over 10 Marquette. Quinton Hooker (19.0 points per game) is no joke and he’s one of three players to average double figures this season for North Dakota. This game takes place on Friday. Oklahoma State has the next best chance at making the Elite Eight with 6 percent.
5 Iowa State over 12 Nevada. Can the heat wave continue for MI? On the other side of the bracket, MI defeats Kansas State handily.
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Wisconsin’s spot as an eight seed puts them against ninth-seeded Virginia Tech.
