2010 NCAA March Madness Picks

By Brian Harris

It’s March, so that means rainstorms, St. Patty’s Day and March Madness. Thousands of people all over the country fill out a bracket (or brackets) in order to win whatever pool they are in. The tournament has truly turned into a national pastime that during the latter part of March into the beginning of April, gives the majority of the country whiplash from constantly looking back & forth from their TV to their scribble-covered brackets.

So as you are sitting at work or wherever you probably shouldn’t be doing your bracket, here are my region-by-region picks and other random bit of info you should know.

Midwest

Regional Final-Kansas over Georgetown

Team That Will Make Some Noise-Georgia Tech

The overall number one seed, Kansas, has an easy road, I feel. The rest of the bracket has underwhelming teams like Maryland, Oklahoma State and Tennessee. The Georgetown Hoyas, the three seed, have a very solid team and I see them tearing through the bottom half of the bracket but in the end, the Jayhawks have a rock-chalk solid base that is simply too good for G-Town to overtake.

West

Regional Final-Syracuse over Pittsburgh

Team That Will Make Some Noise-UTEP

This bracket is very underwhelming, to say the very least. There’s really only three teams in this bracket that are real, honest-to-goodness, threats to make a run for the championship; The ‘Cuse, Pitt and Kansas State. I see the 12th –seeded Conference USA regular season champs UTEP taking advantage of Butler and Vanderbilt and making it to the Sweet 16. In the end, Syracuse, who unfairly had to go out West due to Duke getting a higher one seed, even though they’ve been quite underwhelming this year (and I’m a Duke fan), will beat Pitt in a really good game to head to Indianapolis.

East

Regional Final-West Virginia over Kentucky

Team That Will Make Some Noise-Temple

Kentucky got the hardest draw, in my opinion, bracket-wise in this year’s tournament. With teams like Temple, Missouri, Texas, Marquette and New Mexico, Kentucky drew the proverbial “Group of Death”, to borrow a phrase from the World Cup. I feel that Kentucky’s raw talent, led by wunderkind John Wall, will get through the minefield but will meet their demise by the tank known as the Mountaineers of West Virginia, winners of the Big East, which is the premier conference in college basketball.

South

Regional Final-Duke over Villanova

Team That Will Make Some Noise-Texas A&M

As a Duke fan, it’s really hard for me to justify their bracket. Honestly, this bracket comes across as Coach K picked it himself. Not only do they get the winner of the play-in game, the only other true challenge in this bracket is Villanova. Norte Dame and Purdue lost their top players, Luke Harangody and Robbie Hummel respectively, so they pose no real threat in the tournament. Baylor and Texas A&M are solid Big 12 teams but in the end Duke will use their late-season momentum to take down the Wildcats and go on to Indy.

Final Four

National Semifinals-Kansas over Syracuse, Duke over West Virginia

National Championship-Kansas over Duke

Duke, who started off the season in a very unassuming fashion but slowly built up momentum thanks to Jon Scheyer and Kyle Singler stepping up huge for the Blue Devils, will eek out a win over the Bob Huggins-led Mountaineers while the Orange of Syracuse will put up a valiant effort against the Jayhawks but Kansas is simply too good and will win. As for the championship, the huge pot of luck that Duke fed off of for the entire tournament, draw-wise< will run out and Kansas will make an example out of them on their way to winning their second national championship in three years.

The tournament, as a whole, doesn’t really show any Cinderellas at first glance. At lot of experts think that Siena will use a weakened Purdue as a springboard to a George Mason-like run but that was an exception unlike any other. However, you never know what can happen and that’s why March Madness is called March Madness.