“Bruins? I love those cute little bears… And I just luvvvvvvvv cats, Wildcats, and Tigers… Ooh, I had a neighbor named Blair Davidson. He had really pretty eyes. Jay Hawks? What’s a Jay Hawk, anyway? My cousin lives in Kansas and she sent me a T-shirt. I’ll pick them.”

Yes, she did pick three out of the Final Four teams.

The reason her kind of approach gets so much attention when it succeeds is because, in reality, that type of method rarely wins—but it sure does make “bracketology” fun.

Let’s try to do a little more than throw up our hands to the hot chick system and see what the numbers tell us…

1. Extreme scenarios do not happen. Never will a 64-team bracket play out with every higher seeded team winning every game until the four top seeds reach the Final Four. Nor will two 16 seeds play in the title game.
2. Never has a top seed lost to a sixteen seed—although the odds say it should have happened by now. But, in the first round there is over a 50% chance a 2, 3, or 4 will get beat. At least one 2-6 seed WILL be upset in the first round during any given tournament.
3. One or two 11 or 12 seeds will advance to the Sweet 16 in a typical 64-team bracket.
4. Usually, the teams are seeded as accurately as human management will allow, which means there will be some serious, even laughable mistakes.

By now you are asking, “So Mr. Smarty Pants, how do we apply your axioms to this year’s bracket?”

Let’s take a gander at the First Round, region by region…

FIRST ROUND

MIDWEST REGION

Sleeper Special – Dayton over West Virginia…Other than that little gem, I see the region playing true to form. The only other upset might come from Arizona over the Utes. The Wildcats are limping into the tourney and have been inconsistent all year.

THE WILD WEST

Maryland has the best shot for the Upset Special. The ACC is tougher and more demanding than the Pac-10. Cal leans on the outside game; the Terps force things inside and have the personnel to do it well.

Same call for Utah State. Marquette has been inconsistent and their recent performances during the Madness have been pedestrian.

DOWN SOUTH

Chester Frazier’s hand injury will make the Illini’s task more difficult and the coolly named WKU Hilltoppers showed what they could do as a high seed last year. I am going against the prevailing sentiment and sticking with Illinois.

Look for the surprise when Temple bottles up Arizona State. The Owls had a stellar A-10 tourney; the Sun Devils play defense with anyone. Should be a low scoring nail biter.

IN THE EAST

I just hope Pittsburgh doesn’t play like they did in the Big East tourney. They should approach it like a tough workday and take care of business. The only upset I can see unfolding is the very close to home VCU “hosting” the UCLA Bruins. However, Ben Howland is battle tested and has the troops to overcome any obstacle.

So, Mr. Smarty Pants has spoken with his usual wisdom, confidence, and vast knowledge…

Then again, he knows for a fact the that Blue Devil mascot is totally cute… Oh yeah, and Elvis used to live in Memphis—how can you pick against “The King?”… And Orange is his favorite color…

NEXT WEEK: ROUND TWO

March Madness is finally here!

What’s that, say you? It’s not March Madness yet! There are no brackets, no upsets, no buzzer-beaters.

Ah, but there are. Conference Tournament Week is here. And each year, the conference tournaments expand more and more both in excitement and importance, having reached that point in their evolution at which they are no longer just a mere precursor or warm-up act to the big dance but now stand as the entire first act. Selection Sunday is no longer just the kick-off of the Tournament; it has become the turning point of an extended dramatic structure.

When some school with a .500 or less winning percentage goes on a miraculous run during the conference tourney, upsetting the Number 1 seed and landing the conference’s automatic berth when they otherwise had no chance in hell of advancing to anything but the NIT (and maybe not even that), the Madness has already begun.

Case in point… on Thursday, Pitt, Kansas, Oklahoma and Clemson were all upset by vastly inferior teams. Then, in the nightcap, Big East arch-rivals Connecticut and Syracuse played a game for the ages, with the Orange upsetting the Huskies in sextuple–yes, six!–overtime.

More so than any other sport, college basketball has seen unprecedented growth over the last twenty-five years, largely because CBS realized that the NCAA Tournament was marketable specifically because some small school no one has ever heard of except for its alumni could pull off a series of upsets and go deep into the Tourney, not despite such an occurrence.

It’s a situation pretty much unique in American team sports. The college basketball tournament thrives on those upsets happening, and a deep run by a smaller program actually generates fan interest instead of dampening it. One would think the underdog phenomenon would prevail across the sports spectrum, but the ratings success of the professional leagues and Division I-A college football sadly lives and dies with the exposure and success of the big-name teams. Phillies-Rays was not a highly-rated World Series, for example (it should be noted that the Super Bowl has become such a cultural event that it is immune to the popularity of the teams playing).

Ironically, the powers-that-be at NCAA still frequently fail to divorce themselves from their big conference paychecks in awarding smaller schools more at-large berths. I’m not saying that the Selection Committee should pick a mid-major school over a Big-6 Conference school if it’s not warranted, but time and again the Committee favors the traditional powerhouses having an off year rather than the small program having a great year when, all things being equal, the selection is otherwise a toss-up. Fortunately, the automatic bid system always means there will be underdogs for whom to root… and their success puts the madness in March Madness.