Madness Begins In March

-By Reece Pelley-

With a crazy up and down regular season in college basketball the whole sports world has turned to see what theatrics will come out of this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Six teams during the regular season have been ranked number one in the nation, which means seeding should play a smaller role in this year’s tournament. Big conference leaders such as North Carolina, Wake Forest and Duke out of the ACC as well as Pittsburgh and the University of Connecticut in the Big East should get the nod to be placed as top seeds but after Pitt’s lose to unranked Providence and North Carolina’s midseason loss to Boston College these rankings shouldn’t mean much come the sweet 16. Also not to be discounted are some dangerous sleeper teams such as Butler out of the Horizon Conference that demolished last year’s Cinderella team, Davidson. Wake Forest and Duke out of the ACC are two other sleeper teams, who held the number one ranking for a week, that show signs of inflicting serious damage to the elite eight if they use their speed of play.

Along with the ACC and Big East, both the Big 12 and Big 10 will contribute serious clubs this year that have the ability to run deep into March. Teams such as Oklahoma out of the Big 12 South - led by one of the beast players of this year Blake Griffin -- can both shoot and run a solid defensive scheme that has already led them to a 25-3 record along with a number two ranking. Teams to watch out of the Big 10 include both Michigan State and Purdue that have played a solid season so far and are now playing game-to-game in a competition for the Big 10 title.