Sports Time Radio

Do you have your NCAA tournament bracket up and ready to go? If not you better get gong on it because the tournament play-in games are tomorrow.

How many brackets do you actually fill out? I’m not over the top like some people. I do two brackets every year, but this year I did a third as I helped Dan the Man out with his NCAA office pool. Now I have Gonzaga winning in one of my brackets and then I went with Illinois in my other bracket. Now that might’ve been a homer pick as I live in the Chicago suburbs. What that also means is neither team will win the NCAA title and will probably be upset early in the tournament because I picked them. It just seems that’s how things go for me when it comes to my NCAA bracket and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.

Not the Big Ten was clearly the best conference in college basketball this season and it showed in the NCAA brackets. Illinois and Michigan are #1 seeds while Ohio State and Iowa grab #2 seeds. Purdue also made the NCAA tournament field and they where seed at #4. You can also add four other Big Ten teams into the NCAA field. Wisconsin is an 8th seed while Rutgers is in as a 9th seed. Maryland is also in the field as a 10th seed and the final Big Ten team in the field is Michigan State who is an 11th seed and will be facing UCLA in one of tomorrow’s play-in games.

Does this mean a Big Ten team will win the tournament; not necessarily. I did hear quite a few experts say that they thought Illinois was playing the best basketball coming into the tournament, but will that carry over into the tournament since they’ll be off for four days before they play their opening round game.

Now don’t forget that the 1st round will be on Friday and Saturday this year. Normally it’s Thursday and Friday, but not this season. The 2nd round games will be played on Sunday and Monday. Will still have a lot of college basketball over a four day period; it’s just going to start a day later than we’re used to.

Now the Big Ten wasn’t the only conference that got a good number of teams into the NCAA tournament. The Big 12 and the ACC each got seven teams into the NCAA tournament. The SEC got six team in while the PAC 12 got five teams in. The Big East got four teams into the NCAA tournament while the American, Atlantic 10, Mountain West, Missouri Valley and the West Coast Conference all sent two teams to the tournament.

Now everybody is always looking for those 1st round upsets when they’re filling out their brackets. The best bet for these upsets seems to be a 12th seed beating a 5th seed. That means teams like Georgetown, Oregon State, Winthrop and UCSB will be popular upset picks in Round 1. It’s a very good bet that all of the #1 seeds win their first game as only one time in NCAA tournament history has a 16th seed beaten a #1 seed, but with the way this year has went we see an upset like that again?

There also always seems to be one lower seeded team that makes it farther than anyone expected. In my bracket I have San Diego St. advancing to the Elite Eight. San Diego St. is a #7 seed; so they’ll have to pull off an upset or two to get to the Elite Eight, but they where my surprise team. Of course since I’m picking them they’ll end up going out in the 1st round.

I’d be very interested to know some things about your NCAA tournament brackets. How many brackets do you fill out? How do you have winning the tournament? Who’s your sleeper team or teams?

I wish you good luck with your bracket and I hope you’re not someone who ends up with the bracket being a complete mess after these first couple of rounds of games.

Don’t forget to listen to the Sports Time Radio podcast live on BlogTalkRadio.com. Now if you miss the live edition of the podcast don’t worry. All you have to do is head over to TuneIn.com and you can listen anytime you want.

You can also find me on Twitter @Burketime