NCAA Basketball Tournament Predictions - 2008 Midwest Region
June 9, 2008
The NCAA tournament is rapidly approaching and before we know it we will be spending each weekend rooting for our picks to come true so we can win our office an online pools. But lets be honest picking the winning bracket isn’t very easy and nearly impossible to be perfect, so when it comes to picking upsets and tough games its not a bad idea to get a little help. That’s where we come into play as we are breaking down each bracket to help you earn bragging rights for the next year.
Lets go to the Midwest where a couple good teams are getting ready to showcase their talent. The region is led by #1 Kansas who made up for its earlier loss to Texas to take home the Big 12 Tournament title last weekend. On the other side of the bracket is #2 Georgetown, where the Hoyas will be looking to repeat last year’s performance with another Final Four run. This region also has two scary teams in #3 Wisconsin who rolled through the Big 10, and #5 Clemson who looked pretty impressive in the ACC tournament. And that’s not even the best of it, in the most anticipated first round match up in all 4 regions the Midwest has #6 USC taking on #11 Kansas State. The reason this game is getting so much attention is that it has plenty of future NBA talent led by Kansas State’s Michael Beasley, and USC’s O.J. Mayo. Now lets take a look at each game with our expert picks on who will wind up in the Final Four out of the Midwest
Round 1
The Midwest doesn’t seem to have the firepower as some of the other regions, but should have quite a few interesting matchups. We aren’t seeing a lot of upsets in this bracket in the first round, as the only lower seeds we see winning are #9 Kent St. who we think is much better than #8 UNLV, and the other upset we see is #10 Davidson over #7 Gonzaga. The rest of the bracket should play out with the top seeds winning and moving on to round 2.
Round of 32
This is where the upsets start and just don’t stop, as only #1 Kansas will avoid an early exit as the higher ranked team. We like #5 Clemson to remain hot and take down #4 Vanderbilt, #6 USC will stun Bo Ryan’s Badgers and head on to the Sweet 16, and the biggest of them all will see #10 Davidson taking home a huge win over #2 Georgetown. So that leaves us with 4 teams and only one above a 5 seed.
Sweet 16
Things start to come back to reality as we like #1 Kansas to take care of #5 Clemson and move one step closer to a Final Four birth. In the other game we like #6 USC to just keep on winning when it ends #10 Davidson’s magical run in the NCAA Tournament.
Elite 8
With just two teams remaining we get a very interesting matchup with #1 Kansas against #6 USC. Kansas will come in, as the veteran team that has proven itself all season long, while USC is a very young and dangerous team that could just finally be clicking at the right time. What makes this game so intriguing is USC’s coach Tim Floyd is well known for coming up with some creative defenses to take away the other teams best attributes. But even with that we just don’t think there is any way Kansas will lose here, so pencil it in the Jay Hawks are headed to the Final Four.
Take a look at the NCAA Tournament Contest at Bodog and it’s completely free to get signed up. So hurry up and get signed up now and get your bracket filed out today.