- 12-seeds beat 5's regularly -- at least one has for 9 of last 10 years.
- A double-digit seed for many years has made it to the round of 16 -- last year it 11-seed Xavier in the West, who even went to E8.
- The last few years, a team has won the "First Round" game in Dayton (known to the rest of as "play-in games") and won their next game, too -- given they are typically 11 or 12 seeds, this is a "bubble buster."
- Never have all top 4 seeds in all regions made it to the Sweet 16; "chalk" only takes you so far;
1. The trick, of course, is to figure out which one, and not miss two games
instead of none. Thursday I wrote this post on my personal blog sight
about who seem to be the hot takes
here. Looking at today's
Jerry Palm's bracket
(my favorite, as he's a fellow Purdue grad), he has Ohio St. v. Vermont in the
South, Gonzaga v. W. Kentucky (the speculative winner in the Conference USA)
in the East, Kentucky v. New Mexico St in the West, and Clemson v. South
Dakota St in the Midwest. My first take is that Gonzaga is the safest 5
in the list; the other 3 12's are mid-major-follower darlings and not much of
anyone believes strongly in the three 5's. Expect the 12 over 5 trend to
continue with those matchups.
2. Given the above paragraph, with a 12 beating a 5, it isn't a surprise to think a 12 can go on to beat a 4 seed and get to the Sweet 16. Unlike the above paragraph, we are now going 2 games deep, so it's highly speculative, but if Vermont beats Ohio St (just to use the upper left hand bracket, not to annoy my OSU readers :)), they would play a 4-seed Auburn, who looked vulnerable lately and yesterday very much so in the second half against Alabama. In other words, highly imaginable.
3. I went over this in my Thursday post, but today's Palm bracket has different games: OU v. Syracuse (as 11's) in the East, and St. Mary's (CA) v. Marquette (again, 11's) in the Midwest. OU has been off the last weeks, and I wonder how they'll handle Syracuse's zone (not well, based on their frantic, undisciplined play); St. Mary's hasn't played, let a lone beaten, anyone like Marquette all year, except for a win at Gonzaga. Syracuse would then play Florida; Marquette would play Houston. If that was the scenario, I would see Marquette the most likely one to continue the trend. Could OU win both games? They have the talent.
4. Again, now we are getting a lot of games into the mix, but this is worth remembering before you hit the "chalk" button on your bracket software and leave it: someone in the top 4 lines will lose before the end of the first weekend. My opening pick (remember, this only means a 5 over a 4, not a huge upset) to break chalk -- given yesterday's blog on probable winners, I'd go with Gonzaga in the East over Texas Tech (Obvious John's former love). And, to throw my Ohio St friends a bone, the Ohio St-Auburn matchup would be tempting, too. Ohio St was also on that probable winners list, remember.
That's today's insight. I hope you are enjoying it -- there's been good readership (for my blog). And listen to our bonus podcast on soundcloud.com/obviousbrothers -- we'll cover all these points with a couple opinionated (if not necessarily accurate, obviously 😁) guests.
2. Given the above paragraph, with a 12 beating a 5, it isn't a surprise to think a 12 can go on to beat a 4 seed and get to the Sweet 16. Unlike the above paragraph, we are now going 2 games deep, so it's highly speculative, but if Vermont beats Ohio St (just to use the upper left hand bracket, not to annoy my OSU readers :)), they would play a 4-seed Auburn, who looked vulnerable lately and yesterday very much so in the second half against Alabama. In other words, highly imaginable.
3. I went over this in my Thursday post, but today's Palm bracket has different games: OU v. Syracuse (as 11's) in the East, and St. Mary's (CA) v. Marquette (again, 11's) in the Midwest. OU has been off the last weeks, and I wonder how they'll handle Syracuse's zone (not well, based on their frantic, undisciplined play); St. Mary's hasn't played, let a lone beaten, anyone like Marquette all year, except for a win at Gonzaga. Syracuse would then play Florida; Marquette would play Houston. If that was the scenario, I would see Marquette the most likely one to continue the trend. Could OU win both games? They have the talent.
4. Again, now we are getting a lot of games into the mix, but this is worth remembering before you hit the "chalk" button on your bracket software and leave it: someone in the top 4 lines will lose before the end of the first weekend. My opening pick (remember, this only means a 5 over a 4, not a huge upset) to break chalk -- given yesterday's blog on probable winners, I'd go with Gonzaga in the East over Texas Tech (Obvious John's former love). And, to throw my Ohio St friends a bone, the Ohio St-Auburn matchup would be tempting, too. Ohio St was also on that probable winners list, remember.
That's today's insight. I hope you are enjoying it -- there's been good readership (for my blog). And listen to our bonus podcast on soundcloud.com/obviousbrothers -- we'll cover all these points with a couple opinionated (if not necessarily accurate, obviously 😁) guests.
No comments:
Post a Comment