It’s Wednesday morning and we’re about 24-hours from tip-off. We’ve already broken down the East and West Regions, and I’ve stared at my bracket like it has gigantic breasts all week. On to the dirty South Region.
Overview: The South is filled with power conference teams that could have, but didn’t. Could have won their conference tournaments - UNC, but Lawson was hurt; Syracuse, but were dead tired after hella OTs; Illinois, but can’t score worth a shit; Arizona St., but USC caught fire; Oklahoma, but OK State got their revenge; even LSU and Clemson had outside shots at conference championships. Be weary of the mid-majors in the South - Butler, Gonzaga, Western Kentucky and Temple - they could be the spoilers once again for these “could haves.”
Cinderella: Temple. Christmas comes early this year for Temple. Not, the holiday, senior Dionte Christmas, Temple’s leading scorer. At 6′5″, Christmas is hard for smaller guards to shutdown and could present match-up problems for Arizona State. If Temple and Christmas start hitting 3s against the Sun Devil’s zone defense, they’ll likely draw another zone defense in the second round with Syracuse. With Christmas in March, we’ll see whose been naughty and whose been nice.
Sleeper: No. 7 seed, Clemson. At times Clemson was better than a 7 seed this year and at times worse. Clemson Coach Oliver Purnell is still looking for his first NCAA tournament win and this should be the year. They face a Michigan team that was one of the last teams into the tournament and will be one of the first to leave the tournament as well. Clemson is well balanced and deep, their bigs will pose a tough match-up with Oklahoma in the second round - a game of two under-performing teams - that should be ripe for a Clemson upset.
South Region Randomness: Syracuse plays Stephen F. Austin, the university not the person (a.k.a. The Father of Texas), in the first round. Stephen F. Austin State are the Lumberjacks and the school is located in Nacogdoches, Texas. (Awesome!) SFA (for short) has a chance at winning a national championship this April, but not in basketball, in Large (team) COED Cheerleading. They have 9 total national championships in the sport and are on a streak of five-straight titles. No big deal.
Favorites: Even if UNC’s Ty Lawson is still somewhat injured, he should be able to play enough to get Tarheels through the first weekend and give himself a couple more days of rest before the Sweet 16 round. Oklahoma is a mystery, the Griffin brothers are a dangerous duo, but something isn’t right with the Sooners down the stretch (to be fair this was with Blake Griffin out for the most part), losers for 4 of their last 6. They’ve had a lot of time to think about their Big 12 Conference Tourney loss to rivals Oklahoma State. Syracuse has been on fire and hitting their stride , they got their swagger back! Gonzaga has one of their best teams in years, they are well balanced, tall and deep (That’s what she said!), a Gonzaga/UNC match-up in the Sweet 16 could be on the horizon.
Region MVP: Gonzaga’s Austin Daye. Sure, Pargo and Heytfelt are the senior leaders, but this will be Daye’s coming out party. The versatile sophomore can score in a number of ways and might be the go-to person on the Zags roster when they need a bucket. A big showing on the national stage could propel Daye to make the jump to the NBA, but he probably needs at least another year to develop. If Daye is hitting on the offensive side, it’s going to open up for the rest of Gonzaga and result in surviving the weekend and squaring off against UNC in the Sweet 16.
TastyBooze East Region: UNC, Gonzaga, Syracuse, and Clemson.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Oklahoma could easily win this whole bracket too…..watch out for an angry Blake