I’m not going to claim to be the most creative guy in the world. That’s why you tend to see posts on here reviewing what Lunardi does and basically copying Andy Glockner’s bubble watch. Well, you can actually find great and insightful stuff outside of the mainstream (and it can be hard to find great insightful stuff IN the mainstream). I recently poked my head over to Storming the Floor (while you’re busy bookmarking www.bizarrojoelunardi.com you should bookmark www.stormingthefloor.com too) and found their take on NCAA Tournament superlatives. Read their post here and then come back here for a bit of reaction.
Their candidates of teams to be this year’s Florida or Oregon (that had hot starts, cooled down, and then reheated) included Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, and Arizona State. They ended up picking the Rebels due to Kennedy and I can’t blame them for that. The fabulous freshmen at Vanderbilt (A.J. Ogilvy) and Arizona State (James Harden) have given boosts to their respective teams and make them great candidates as well. Another team that I’d throw into that list that is cheating a little bit is Dayton. With injuries to Chris Wright and Charles Little it makes sense that we’d see a fall from that great start the Flyers had. Provided they can return healthy the Flyers are still a team I’d want nothing to do with in March.
Storming the Floor didn’t take too much of a leap when they considered South Alabama, Saint Mary’s (their final prediction), Butler, and Drake as candidates to be this year’s Cinderella. Those are certainly safe picks but let me throw two more into the mix. Kent State boasts pretty good balance (with four players averaging over 9 points per game) while playing pretty good defense and forcing a decent number of turnovers. In addition, the team this award could be named for deserves a mention; that is, of course, George Mason. While the Patriots still sit behind VCU (by the way, another candidate for this list) they still have talented players with Final Four experience in Will Thomas and Folarin Campbell as well as players that can go 10/10 from three point range in Dre Smith.
Indiana was chosen as the not top seed that everyone says will go to the Final Four. That’s probably a great pick because I can see that too (and in a talk with Chad yesterday I said they were the only team that I thought had a chance to do anything from the Big 10 because I would never want to face Gordon or White). So, Indiana was a great choice. My problem with coming up with another pick here is that I’m not sure who all will be the top seeds (or what “top seeds” entails; 1s and 2s?). On this one I’ll take the easy way out and agree with Storming the Floor.
The next pick was the team most likely to destroy your bracket. Storming the Floor’s winner of Arizona was a solid one, partly because they’re always difficult to seed. The last couple of years they have been a solid team that plays a brutal schedule and then I’m not sure if they’re more like a 5 seed or a 12 seed or anywhere in between. USC is another great pick for this but I’ll toss Kansas State into the mix. I know we get a decent amount of Wildcat fans on our blog because of Chad (hey guys, thanks for visiting!). Of course this is all contingent on them even getting in. The thing about Kansas State is that against the vast majority of teams they will have the best two players on the floor. However, they are both freshmen and it’ll be tough to predict how they will respond.
Minnesota was taken as this year’s slide-in team that no one really knows was any good. My guess is that Minnesota will not end up with enough quality wins to get in. I think Purdue is likely the better Big 10 choice for this award. Also keep an eye on Mississippi State. The Bulldogs are off to a 4-0 conference start and the SEC is bad enough that they could rack up a pretty big conference record.
Stanford was the pick for the team most likely to be picked against in an upset. That’s a great pick actually. The other picks of Georgetown and Texas A&M are solid. The Hoyas really haven’t done much this year other than beat bad teams. The only problem with the Aggie pick is that if they win zero conference games the rest of the year they’re not getting in (or at least not getting a seed that can result in an upset). I think other teams that could fit in here are the teams that were mentioned on the first superlative. Teams like Vanderbilt and Ole Miss might still pick up decent seeds despite slip-ups. Those slip-ups, however, may lead everyone to pick an upset.
2 comments:
I like your K-State pick. When we did the preseason at STF, I had them middle of the pack in league play, because I felt they'd struggle. Well, if I had used my brain, I would have predicted they'd struggle early and then put it together in conference, which is what has happened.
Beasley really doesn't even have to try to go out and get a double-double - he looks like he's gliding around. And if that doesn't work, Bill Walker will just pee himself and ensure that his man backs off a bit.
I wouldn't spend too much time beating yourself up for not predicting K-State's improvement throughout the season. I would have, but that's because their my team and I follow them closely. Even as they struggled earlier in the year, it was easy for me to find similarities to last years team. The big problem for the 2006-07 Wildcats was learning to play Huggins' style of defense. And they went through those same struggles this year due to all the freshman they have playing. But to an outside observer, this may have looked like an inexperienced team playing for an inexperienced coach. But now we can see that Frank Martin's actually doing an excellent job coaching this team and that was probably the biggest question mark for K-State coming into the year.
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