If you had Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth and Butler in your sweet 16, your bracket would be looking pretty good right now. The tournament was predicted to be entertaining and to have some upsets, and it has not disappointed.
There has been a total of 12 upsets so far through three rounds of play. With this many upsets, it leads one to wonder if the tournament committee accurately assigned the right rankings to teams or if some of these teams are just playing their best basketball at the right time.
When it comes to ranking the teams, those that do well in the power conferences and win their respective conference tournaments will earn a higher seed. These are the teams that will usually be ranked first through fourth. The rest of the seeds are given to teams that are in the power conferences and the teams that win the smaller conference tournaments or performed well enough during the regular season to make it.
It is hard to determine how well the smaller conference schools will do during the tournament, because the average fan doesn’t get to see them play as much as the other larger schools. The smaller schools have high quality talent but are not recognized as much because of the conference they play in and the little amount of exposure they receive.
After this weekend, it seems the committee needs to do a little more research on each team and reconsider how they rank the teams. After failing to include teams such as Virginia Tech and Colorado, they need make sure they pick the right teams to participate in the tournament as well.
There is nothing that we can do about the committee’s decisions now, so all we can do now is sit back and watch the Sweet 16 unfold. The fourth round is sure to provide some interesting match-ups.
Southwest region has probably seen the most chaos: 10th ranked Florida State, 11th ranked VCU, and 12th ranked Richmond still alive. This region will be interesting to keep an eye on and see if one of these teams can continue to play the role of Cinderella and move on to the elite… and maybe even the Final Four. The number one seed Kansas will be there to try and squash the dreams of one of these underdog teams.
The next region is the Southeast where you have last year’s tournament runner-up in Butler playing against Big 10 heavy weight Wisconsin in one game and Jimmer Fredette’s BYU squad playing against the number two seed Florida. It would be interesting to have a game between the Jimmer show and the Butler Bulldogs to see who moves on to the Final Four.
The game between the number two seed San Diego State and the number three seed Uconn might be the most entertaining game of the round of 16. Both teams are equipped with a high-powered offensive attack and are deep with talent. The other game of the West region pits the number one seed Duke Blue Devils against the surprising Arizona Wildcats. If the Blue Devil’s can shut down the Wildcat’s All-American Derrick Williams, they will move on to the Elite Eight without any trouble.
Three of the elite programs in the country will be playing in the East region. Ohio State, North Carolina and Kentucky will all be in action in Newark, N.J. Jared Sullinger leads a veteran group of Buckeyes against the youthful and talented Kentucky Wildcats to see who will move on to play the winner of North Carolina and the unexpected Marquette Golden Eagles game. The quality of talent will lead the Tar Heels past Marquette and will set them up to play the loaded Ohio State Buckeyes to see who gets the chance to move on to the Final Four.
