There are a lot of people out there who profess to know a lot about college basketball. The mistake many of those people make is assuming that this knowledge will somehow transfer into successful NCAA Tournament brackets. In the end, this false confidence only causes them to drop like canaries in a poisoned coal mine.
And there is no poster child better for this epidemic better than ESPN’s Andy Katz. The analyst for ESPN’s College Gamenight is the Steven Hawking of college basketball, yet in a pool featuring some of Bristol University’s best, Katz is in last place.
Not only that, but Katz is in the bottom 4 percent of the nation. Still, all is not lost for the prodigy, who does have all of his final four teams still in the tournament. But that isn’t tough to do when you affirm the NCAA selection committee’s decision by predicting all of the No. 1 seeds to advance to the Final Four.
While Mark Anderson, a graduate student in the Business School, may not have quite as much time to dedicate to his college basketball studies, he was still able to correctly pick each of the 32 first round matchups in the MichiganDaily.com/Pizza House Challenge. Unfortunately for Anderson, Louisville fell victim to Butler’s Lee Harvey Oswald-like sharp shooting.
Anderson isn’t the only one cursing Rick Pitino’s luck. Illinois apparently impressed a lot of people in Ann Arbor with its two wins over Michigan and its capturing of the Big Ten title. Unfortunately, the Illini couldn’t sober the Fighting Irish – who were a missed layup away from falling to Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Friday night.
Meanwhile, No. 10 Auburn, which shouldn’t have even been there, had adults weeping like babies as it tore up their brackets when it sent No. 2 Wake Forest back to North Carolina. Florida didn’t do much more do prove themselves worthy of its No. 2 seed by getting beaten up by Michigan State.
And as bad as Katz is doing in his poll, The Michigan Daily was able to find worse. Doug Constantine, an engineer from Portage who managed to one-up Katz in the first round by picking 21 games right, showed his Big Ten pride when he picked Illinois, Purdue and Wisconsin to make it to the Final Four.
And while this pride in his hometown conference is perfectly acceptable (though slightly off-base), the notion that No. 9 North Carolina State could beat No. 1 Oklahoma or that No. 9 Gonzaga could topple No. 1 Arizona is ludicrous. Further, after four days of basketball, Constantine only has two teams (Kansas and Wisconsin) remaining in the tournament – all but guaranteeing a last-place finish. Either Constantine was letting his dog pick his teams or he was trying to throw the pool worse than the 1918 White Sox.
So, if like Constantine, you find yourself as far from winning your pool as the Tigers are from winning the 2003 World Series, there is only one thing that they should do – sit back, relax and allow yourself to go crazy when Drew Nicholas hits a fall-away jumper with no time remaining to put Maryland over UNC-Wilmington.