Who will win the Southeast?

      2 Comments on Who will win the Southeast?

If there’s one region on my bracket that’s giving me major headaches right now, it’s the Southeast. The region has some incredibly weak top seeds (#1 Pitt, which always seems to be a paper tiger come tournament time; #2 Florida, grossly overseeded for no discernible reason; and #3 BYU, struggling without Brandon Davies) and five of the strongest mid-majors in the entire tournament (#8 Butler, #9 Old Dominion, #11 Gonzaga, #12 Utah State and #13 Belmont), the latter two just criminally underseeded (and forced to potentially face each other in a #12 vs. #13, mid-on-mid-violence Round of 32 game). Combined, there’s a 17.1% chance that one of those five mid-major teams will reach the Final Four, according to Ken Pomeroy’s log5 stats, with the #12 Aggies (6.4%), #13 Bruins (4.6%) and #11 Zags (3.9%) actually having the fifth-, sixth- and seventh-best odds in the region, respectively, trailing only the top 4 seeds. All of which adds up to, for me, the following hot mess of a nonsensical, pie-in-the-sky, NOT-GONNA-HAPPEN bracket:

As I tweeted with that photo, “Is there a support group for this? #OfficePoolSuicide #CantHelpMyself.”

Then again, it doesn’t exactly help dissuade me from this lunacy when mainstream sports media guys are basically saying, yeah, that could totally happen:

I’m really not sure what to do with my bracket here. Do I pick one of the mid-majors, most likely Belmont, to reach the Final Four? Do I bank on another round of Tom Izzo Magic? (Pomeroy’s stats answer that one with a resounding “no.”) Do I go with dangerous, possibly-peaking-at-the-right-time Kansas State — but: USU! — or perhaps St. John’s or (gulp) UCLA? Or do I pick some early upsets, then bank on one of the surviving favorites to roll through the shattered bracket that’s left after a wild first weekend? But if the latter, which favorite? I have zero faith in either Pittsburgh or Florida, and I’m highly skeptical of BYU without Davies. But then, I (like most of the rest of the country) didn’t have much faith in Duke last year, and yet they successfully navigated a highly favorable bracket to reach the Final Four, then knocked off WVU and Butler to win the whole thing, despite having pretty clearly not even deserved to be a #1 seed in the first place! There are plenty of similar examples of imperfect high seeds taking advantage of upset-filled brackets, and this could well be another. Will paper-tiger Pitt or overseeded Florida or undermanned/oversexed* BYU be “this year’s Duke”? Ugh. I don’t know. I’ll be wrestling with this one for the next 24 hours, I think.

*by BYU standards

2 thoughts on “Who will win the Southeast?

  1. Brendan Loy Post author

    Hmmmmm…. upon reflection, picking St. John’s, who I pegged as a sleeper Final Four team weeks ago in a never-published “bracketology” piece for DU’s newspaper, has a certain appeal. That way, if Gonzaga beats them in the game I’m attending Thursday, I can just root for the Zags without regard for my bracket — and if Gonzaga loses, I’ll at least have my bracket to fall back on.

    Hmmmm.

  2. Joe Mama

    Go with the Johnnies. Losing Kennedy definitely hurts their appeal as a sleeper (they were as high as #4 going into the Big East tournament), but I currently have them making it out of their pod, possibly beating Florida in the Sweet 16, and maybe even going to the FF depending on how many times I redo my bracket this afternoon. You’re right, this region is a killer…

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