General Tourney Thoughts

1. My bracket is extremely busted. I only have one Final Four team left, and that's Connecticut.

2. The Missouri Valley is proving the critics wrong. They're tied with a couple other conferences, but only the Big East has more teams remaining. And the Missouri Valley has knocked off two Big East teams already, Seton Hall and Pittsburgh. And Northern Iowa hung in there with Georgetown, too. The only game in which the Big East dominated the Valley was West Virginia over Southern Illinois.

Furthermore, a CAA team, George Mason, is in the Sweet Sixteen too...

So bite me, Billy Packer.

3. And bite me, Gary Williams, too. If you're going to talk smack about small and mid-major conferences, you might want to, you know, have Maryland win its opening round NIT game against Manhattan.

4. My lord, did the Big Ten suck in this tourney. And yes, I can use the past tense, because the Big Ten is GONE.

5. So now that my bracket is Caput, who do I think is looking good? Well, not my predicted national champ, Connecticut. I think Washington might actually knock them off. Washington, come to think of it, is looking quite good in general.

On the other side of the DC bracket is the Cinderella matchup between Wichita State and George Mason. George Mason has basically a home court, and that might help them, and they beat Wichita State in the regular season. So Mason might pull it out. But the Shockers have looked REALLY GOOD in this tournament. I say Wichita State wins, and loses to Washington in the regional finals.

Florida has looked really good, and with Georgetown dismissing Ohio State so easily, that's looking like quite a matchup. I don't think Georgetown is as consistent, and I think Florida wins the game. Florida will also beat Villanova, who will have easily beaten the overrated Boston College.

Memphis, UCLA, Gonzaga, and Bradley... who cares? The winner of the Oakland Bracket is going nowhere. I guess I'd go with Memphis at this point. But a Bradley upset over Memphis would be hilarious and great.

Duke, LSU, West Virginia and Texas.... Whoever wins the WV vs. Texas game wins the bracket. I think it could be either, but West Virginia has looked surprisingly solid to me, so I'll go with WV.

That leaves a final four of West Virginia, Memphis, Washington and Florida.

WV over Memphis, Florida over Washington. WV wins the title over Florida.

Yes, I know that's crazy, picking West Virginia to win it all. But seeing as I picked Iowa to go to the championship game originally, my picks have absolutely no merit and you should know that.