it feels so good to be baaaaaaaaaaaaaack...

...ok, well, not really. its pretty depressing being on a plane at 5 am traveling from a tropical island to a place with ~1 foot of snow, and then come home to good old NC to find that the temp is having difficulty reaching 50, but all good things must come to an end. Anyways, I'm going to ramble briefly about my tourney thoughts before I start catching up on the homework I've neglected.

I fully agree with John (& Byron), UNC got hosed in terms of set up. Why make the Heels the #2 overall seed if you're going to cram their bracket full (KP 15, 16, 36, 37) of challenges just to make it to the elite eight? And not only is that not enough, but you set up an E8 matchup with Big East Champ G'Town, (KP 5) in NEW JERSEY (a little bit closer to DC than Chapel Hill). WTF, why not just flip the numbers around, #2 UNC v #7 Mich St, #3 Texas (who literally tied #1 seed Kansas twice in 2 weeks), then having to tackle the region's actual #1 (based on ease of competition and being seeded close to home). I was excited about being a #1 until I realized it meant you get screwed over, oh wait, unless you have Greg Oden on your team. Speaking of:

Issue number 2, WHAT BUCKEYE BOOSTER IS PAYING OFF THE COMMITTEE?!?!!?! I mean, I know, I know, Greg Oden is good for college basketball, but PLEASE, do you want to give them some actual competition or just hand them the Atlanta plane tickets/hotel accomodations?? In the top 8, everything is all set up to make sense, #1 Florida v. #8 Wisc, #4 Kansas v. #5 UCLA (strong reg season, but has dropped lately), #3 OSU plays the next best team, being, oh wait, that must be a TYPO, my bracket says MEMPHIS, they must have meant to put G'TOWN, silly committee. I can't honestly understand how they feel the champion of CUSA is a better team than the champion of the BIG EAST. Oh, and those 4/5 seeds? rough times for the Buckeyes, neither 4 (UVA) or 5 (Tenn) is better than Michigan St (UNC's 9 seed), and neither has any inkling of a notion of a lightbulb of a gameplan with a chance in hell of stopping Greg Oden. The Buckeyes can sleep their way to the freaking Elite 8 and get a 3 game tournament.

Ok, other than OBVIOUSLY flipping the UNC/OSU brackets, the other half of the tournament looks very sharp, KU's bracket is hard as expected, and Florida's is easy as expected (though Purdue is proving difficult).

Lastly, what a BORING tourney, I feel glad that I've missed this one out of the past 4 spring breaks, there have been exactly 3 upsets (not counting 1 seed differentials, ie 8/9 or 4/5). Basically the committee hit the nail on the head, never have I seen a Sat/Sun so full of 4 v 5, 2 v 7, and 3 v 6.

Ok, I've got to wash the Ponce stench off of myself and do some Linear Algebra, so GO WINTHROP, down with OverratedU, let's make this tourney interesting.

PS: bonus question, how will the Heels attempt to guard Kevin Durant?