The experts (and fake experts, and fake pundits, and everyone at B/R) seem to agree: the East Region is absolutely loaded. Ohio State, the tournament's #1 overall seed, will likely have to beat George Mason/Villanova, Kentucky and then North Carolina (or Syracuse) to even get to the final four. If the seeds play out, they'll meet Duke there and then Kansas in the championship game. Oh well, nothing worthwhile ever comes easy.
We'll have much more on this during the week, but here's some reading material from around the web:
KenPom profiles for Texas San Antonio and Alabama State. While we're at it, here's George Mason, Villanova, Kentucky, North Carolina and Syracuse.
Yahoo's The Dagger previews the region with "Ohio State's tough road to the Final Four". Money quote:
The committee didn't do the Buckeyes any favors by putting them in the most difficult quarter of the bracket, but Jared Sullinger and company should still get out of the East to advance to Houston. North Carolina is prone to too many cold spells on offense, Kentucky's defense is suspect and even Syracuse doesn't play zone well enough to defend Ohio State's perimeter attack.
FiveThirtyEight's forecast has Ohio State cutting down the nets. Advancement probabilities by round: 1st 2nd round - 99.8%, Round of 16 - 86.2%, Round of Eight - 66.8%, Final Four - 49.3%, championship - 31.3%, winning it all - 20.7%.
Tipoff Time: Ohio State will play at 5pm(-ish). The game will be televised by TNT.
Comments
Our bracket is tough, but amazingly we have the best chance of any team to make the Final 4 by a good margin, at least according to KenPom.
I'll take 50-50 to make the F4, and 25% chance to win it all.
http://i.imgur.com/Dq6sf.png
-TomCollins
http://www.smartfootballrankin...
Swapped your image for a link. That thing was 1100+ pixels wide.
Thanks. I didn't realize it was going to look so awful.
-TomCollins
http://www.smartfootballrankin...
Interesting stuff. Lots of love for Texas, with projected fifth best chance of taking the title. That's a hell of a 4 seed.
KenPom has Texas #5. But since Texas really is a 2 seed playing as a 4, it helps them a lot.
Having a super weak 2 seed and overrated 3 seed puts them in good spot if they can get past Duke.
The data actually needs to be updated since it's missing today's games. I'd calculate it myself but I don't know how to get win probabilities from his ratings.
-TomCollins
http://www.smartfootballrankin...
Wow. Was Jalen Rose on the committee?
Dan Isaacs
Funny, but if you look at those guys twitters, JJ and Rose are buddies...
still will never forget them taunting the Buckeyes after that game. "Shock the world". F 'em.
"Don't put syrup on shit, and tell me it's pancakes"
No matter how sh*tty the tour is, it's always tough to leave.
I'll take Nate Silver's projections over just about everything.
Taquitos.
Was just about to publish that:
http://ncaabracket.nytimes.com/2011/bracket/men/fivethirtyeight-forecast
-TomCollins
http://www.smartfootballrankin...
Cool. It was in the story. :)
There are great names in the east regional, but not necessarily any great teams this year. It makes for good headlines though.
Ugh. I just researched/filled out my West bracket - that region is SO weak. The whole time I kept waiting to find one good team in the bracket that could put Duke, UConn, and SDSU out of the tournament, where they belong, but there's really nobody very impressive there at all.
EXACTLY the same thing that happened to me with Duke's region last year.
Pitt looks like they have an absolute cake walk, how much did we beat florida by?
I like st johns to take that piece down. I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin. And sparty takes out florida.
****igan smells like old water that hot dogs were boiled in. FACT
Can't see it with Kennedy being lost for the remainder of the season with the ACL injury he picked up against 'Cuse. But, clearly, this region appears wide open. Hard not to like Pitt, but I think this will be the one that produces the big Final Four surprise--Wisconsin, KState, MSU, or the Zags.
DotThei