I’m not really a huge US college hoops but I do participate in the annual tradition of filling up NCAA March Madness (the collegiate basketball championship tournament held from mid-March to early April yearly) brackets. Some of the future superstars in the NBA have made a name for themselves in the tourney and I expect a couple of #FutureLakers to show the world what they’re capable of.
Truth be told, I’m not remotely familiar with some of the schools participating in March Madness but the tournament isn’t like pro-basketball playoffs where teams play a series of games before moving on to the next round. Here, schools play each other once and the winner moves on to the next round, whilst the loser goes home with a bag of peanuts. In short, it doesn’t matter if a top school had a great year. All it takes is for them to slip, to lose focus, to slack for just one game and they’re out. ONE GAME. The tournament is filled with upsets — schools not known to have a strong basketball program moving on to the next round after beating a top seed. Last year, the brilliant minds at Harvard upset third seed New Mexico shows just how unpredictable the tournament is.
So, without further ado, here is my bracket:
Again, I am not familiar with all of the teams. I do have a some favorites, but I mostly guessed my way through this tournament (which, believe it or not, is what those so-called analysts do; this tourney is too unpredictable to analyze who will win and who won’t).
I picked Kansas and Duke to, uhhh, duke it out in the Championship Round because who wouldn’t want to see #FutureLakers Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker and Joel Embiid in action? Also, I have Duke to win it all. I’ve been a fan (albeit not as much as I am with the Lakers) of the Blue Devils because of their commitment to basketball and their winning tradition. That’s the main reason why coach Mike Krzyzekwski was selected to head Team USA in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. Oh, and Kobe said he would’ve gone to Duke if he decided to go to college.
Update (9:51 A.M., March 22, 2014):
Duke lost to 14th seed Mercer, 78-71 in the Round of 64, so basically my bracket is useless at this point. I hope you’re doing well with yours.
(You can also read this on my basketball blog, Nothing But Net)
patrickkennan.com 