Lastest Bracket had UM playing my alma mater Stony Brook in second round of tournamnet
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/bracketology
title pretty much says it all.
Also of note: Carolina as 8th seed could be dangerous for Louisville in third round
Minnesota meeting Gonzaga in another 8/1 seed in third round could be interesting as well.
that west bracket would be the weakest in ncaa history
Agreed! What a joke. Although, it would shape up nicely for my Pitt Panthers . . .
Holy Moly is that west bracket puppyshit soft.
Well if the NCAA is going to actually do something like that they ought to go "full retard" and leave all the west coast teams out in the west. Why move UCLA, UNLV and San Diego State out east if you're going to give NewFucking Mexico a two seed and mighty Gonzaga a one?
The MWC is a legit conference, so I give New Mexico their props for winning that league and they deserve a 2/3 seed in the dance.
It's a solid conference, but do you think they'd finish even with us if they were in the Big Ten? Or ahead of OSU and MSU? I highly doubt it. And they lost to South Dakota State at home and two of their losses are beatings (esp at SDSU where they lost by 21). They have no wins over teams currently in the top 25.
FWIW, which may not be much, the Mountain West is the #1 conference in the RPI.
with a grand total of 0 wins over ranked teams in nonconference play
But that just shows one of the major flaws with the RPI. On the whole, I don't hate RPI, but I think the way they decide strength of schedule needs work. For a top 25-to-50ish team, beating teams ranked #125 and #250 is negligibly different, but beating two teams ranked #20 and #50 are worlds apart, but neither is reflected in RPI. Essentially, if you played all teams ranked 50-100 in RPI, your RPI SOS would probably be #1, though you didn't beat anyone good, maybe not even a single tournament team.
This is New Mexico (and a lot of their conference). The top MWC teams made a living playing a ton of bubble teams OOC which makes their SOS look high, but without playing any real contenders. It's not just that they didn't beat any top-25 teams OOC (which is not completely true, SDSU beat UCLA before Shabazz Muhammad came back who is now ranked) it's that they hardly played any.
Of the top 5 MWC teams. I only see 4 top-25 teams that they've played, and all but UCLA were losses.
Neither Gonzaga nor New Mexico will advance past the Sweet 16 - I dont care where they end up seeded. If there's one thing the Tourny does its expose frauds.
And both of those schools are NOT legit basketball powers - sorry. They have glittery records based solely on playing an overabundance of crappy teams.
Stupid NCAA. Despite what those fools may want you to call it, the 2/15 matchup you describe occurs in the first round of the tourney, which starts after the play-in round.
I almost threw my phone in the toilet when I saw the OP refer to it as a second round game. Almost.
No one mentioning that this would have us playing Steve Fisher in the second round? Would be awesome.
Someone in the comments just said he'd rather play Michigan than Iowa State...
weirdly enough, I like Iowa State as a sleeper. They should be 2-0 against Kansas, got robbed both times.
But we have Trey Burke and they don't
Yeah but
I'd rather play Colorado than Florida
See how easy that was? Doesn't make it true.
Was it Torm Izzop?
In that west bracket, I'd take the three seed Arizona battling with eight seed Minnesota in the elite eight
Just noticed an article about Nik on ESPNs mobile app. Someone could post it!
Link to the story you're referring to: http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/9027444/canadian-nik-stauskas-michigan-most-important-import-espn-magazine
I know this bracket is not likely, but we could see Coach Fischer in the second round.
This is not too much different than TeamRankings, which has us in the Midwest playing Stony Brook and then the winner of Colorado-La Salle. If you ask Massey right now, it's 81% for a win probability against Stony Brook, 74% against Colorado and 73% against La Salle. If that were the bracket, we would likely be in good shape to start anyway.
I would love Duke potentially playing Butler in the Sweet 16, assuming Butler gets by Syracuse.