NCAA Roundtable: Midwest Region

The NCAA Tournament is so close we can smell it, so FanHouse's college basketball experts took some time away from their busy schedules to talk about who will come out of each region First up, the Midwest Region.

Shane Bacon: Louisville is the top seed in the NCAA tournament and, thus, the top seed in this bracket. As crazy as college basketball has been this season, this bracket looks to be the easiest march for any of the top seeds. I see the Cardinals advancing to Detroit. I don't think Michigan State can take them down (if they advance that far), Kansas is a cute three seed but not old enough to make a deep run and Wake Forest isn't the team they once were.

I like Louisville getting out of the bracket, with the "big" upset being USC over Boston College.

Chas Rich: I definitely have a hard time not seeing Louisville out of the Midwest. Michigan State just hasn't been consistent this year. First it was injury, then it was illness. It's always something with the Spartans.

West Virginia seems like a scary team in that half of the bracket. Seeded sixth, I can see them getting to the Sweet 16, upsetting Kansas in the second round. The wild card in the lower bracket is USC. Did they really and truly put it together in the Pac-10 or just get hot for a while with their season in the balance? They have the talent, but I don't trust them for more than one or two more games.

Kevin Blackistone: Of all the first round games, the one I want to see features Siena against Ohio State. Siena is like Gonzaga was back in the day. It's very balanced with a bunch of guys who can score. Kenny Hasbrouck and Ronald Moore make a nice backcourt, with Hasbrouck as the scorer and Moore as the efficient, slick ball-handling point who always finds the open man. Siena has a couple of post guys who can rebound. The Saints don't do anything spectacular but they don't have any flaws, either, like Louisville, whose free-throw shooting will kill them in a close game. And you gotta like a team with a Saint Bernard for a mascot? C'mon.

Adam Papagiorgio: I've seen Louisville play once this season -- and it was smoked by UNLV at home, without Wink Adams. Not a great sample size, I admit that. But the point is, nobody is that above reproach here. Nobody is so dominant that they can't lose.

When teams are that even, coaches end up making such a huge deal. Rick Pitino is a great coach, and I like them going into the Elite 8. But Tom Izzo gives Michigan State a great chance to not only survive this regional, but win the whole thing.

Sure, Michigan State lost to Ohio State -- badly. But for some reason -- and I have no scientific proof of this -- I like my teams to win a conference tournament game or two, then bow out. Like it's a spring training game or something. I like MSU to pull the upset in this bracket.

SB: I don't hate your theory on a conference team winning a tournament game or two and then bowing out. I had a conversation with a friend on Monday about how hard it is to win 10 straight collegiate basketball games and that is what you have to do if you win your conference championship and the NCAA tournament. With that said, I'm not saying that Louisville is the horse I'm riding all the way to the nets, but I just don't see enough competition in this bracket to challenge them.

Matt Snyder: I agree MSU has had trouble staying consistently dominant, but they have the talent to put together a strong run. A Sweet 16 match-up against either West Virginia or Kansas -- and I agree about WVU, Chas -- will be a classic game. I firmly believe they have the horses to take down Louisville. Wake, like Michigan State, has enough talent to make a run at Louisville as well. The way the tourney is set up, one-and-done instead of a series, means sometimes a team with lots of talent can just flip the proverbial switch.

On USC, I agree they will take down Boston College, but they won't have enough firepower to beat Michigan State.

One game I'm particularly excited to see is the 8 vs. 9 game. Though those sometimes tend to pit two "blah" teams against each other, this one has Ohio State vs. Siena. Siena is the best mid-major not named Gonzaga or Butler this year, and Ohio State is a young team who just started finding their stride during the Big Ten tournament.

I don't know why, but I'm really leaning against picking Louisville. I agree this is the "easiest" regional, but I just can't stop thinking about how they avoided playing Pitt and UConn on the road or in the Big East Tourney. How would they have fared? We'll never know, but I can't shake that feeling. Plus, they lost to Minnesota on a neutral court!

Jacob Wheatley-Schaller: I'm going to be obnoxious and declare that nobody can have USC as an "upset" pick; they're -2 in that game. Arizona, as a 12 seed, is also a slight favorite against Utah. This is a weird region. I think Michigan St., WVU and even Kansas all have realistic chances of winning this region, but it's just hard to pick them because the bottom half of the bracket is so much more difficult than Louisville's draw; Wake and Utah just aren't that good, although OSU has the potential to shock some people in round two. Upset-wise I'll go with CSU over a Wake team that has really fallen off over the last two months; NDSU over KU wouldn't shock me either.

CR: Louisville spent the last two years stumbling through the non-con before righting the ship. In the prior two, injuries slowed them. This year it was Pitino trying to find a point guard amongst all his shooting guards, before realizing he was better off with Terrance Williams acting as a point-forward. Once that happened, things really started clicking for the Cardinals.

The Minnesota loss was not a surprise simply from a scheduling perspective. They played in Cincy on December 18 against Ole Miss (Big East-SEC Challenge), then had to fly to Arizona to play Minnesota on the 20th. The Siena-Ohio State game should be something. Does OSU get an additional edge for having the game in Ohio? I like Siena, but they've been just good enough to lose. Wake, I just don't trust. They seem too fragile or maybe just too young. That first loss in conference seemed to shake them and they never seemed to recover, playing very inconsistently after that.

Chris Burke: I don't think you can overlook the impact great coaches have, particularly in the tournament. The best coaches in this bracket lead the top three seeds, with Rick Pitino at Louisville, Tom Izzo at Michigan State and Bill Self at Kansas. Izzo, particularly, has gotten deep tournament runs out of teams less talented than this one, so the Spartans have to be a team to be reckoned with. They play defense, like you would expect from a Big Ten team, but also have the horses to get up and down the court -- so should it come to it, they would be a difficult matchup for either Self's Kansas squad or Pitino's Louisville club.

That said, I could see any of five teams coming out of the bottom of the bracket: MSU, West Virginia, Kansas, Boston College or USC. I don't think this bracket is as weak as people think. Up top, Louisville looks like the strongest team by a decent margin, but it's hard to overlook Ohio State playing in Dayton. That's basically a home game for the Buckeyes, and you can't count out any team that has its conference's MVP like Ohio State does in Evan Turner.

Oh, and I know I said Self is a great coach, and Kansas is a Final Four threat, but heads up for North Dakota State in that first-round game. A veteran team with good 3-point shooters is always, always dangerous in the dance.

MS: We might want to clarify that Kalin Lucas was the Big Ten player of the year, but Burke is saying Turner was the most valuable player ... and I certainly would not argue.

AP: May I add one thing to this discussion? Utah has the weight of all the mid-majors riding on its shoulders. The Utes have to win that game, otherwise it validates the committee. Therefore, I imagine that Arizona will get so many calls that even Duke coach Mike Krsyurjhnmjhujyeruski will think it's excessive. Utah will be playing 8-on-5.

If Utah does win this game, USC should have to play a game at Rice-Eccles next year.

SB: I hate to be the one that disagrees with this since I'm an Arizona guy, but the refs aren't going to give either team calls just because "the weight of the mid-majors is riding on a team's shoulders." Maybe I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but Arizona -- as a 12 versus a 5 -- is a favorite in this game. That should say everything that needs to be said about mid-majors.

Trust me, I root for the little guy. I loved the Davidson, George Mason and Valpo runs. Those stories are why we watch the NCAA tournament. I just want anyone to find a guy who plays for a mid-major who wouldn't go to a big school (like Kentucky, Florida or Arizona) if he could start there. It wouldn't happen. Mid-majors are good stories because sometimes teams get hot by playing team ball with good chemistry and catch a team that doesn't want to be there at the right time.

I just think if Arizona wins that game, blaming it on the refs or committee isn't giving certain teams the respect they deserve.

AP: Just a quick clarification, point spreads are not a prediction of what the sports book believes will happen. The lines are set to induce betting on both sides. Even Colin Cowherd got that wrong on the radio today.

JW-S: That doesn't mean they're not a good predictor of what is going to happen, Adam. Or else we'd all be rich.

Ray Holloman: It's no accident Pitino's teams really come together after the winter break. When school is out of session, those NCAA practice limits (20 hours a week for "athletically related activities" I think is what the rule book refers to it as) do not apply and every year, Pitino really capitalizes on that. Nobody works harder during the winter break than Pitino and it's almost a boot camp for his team.

I think Louisville is obviously the favorite to come out of that bracket, but I expect everything in this tournament to play out as unpredictably as the season has. We've had a different No. 1 in each of the last five polls of the season, something that's never happened before in the 64-team era. You have to go back all the way to the poll week ending Dec. 14 to find a week in which all these No. 1 seeds each won (at least, according to the best of my back-of-the-envelope stat checking), so I don't think it's going to magically end here.

And consider that Louisville has its own weaknesses. We'll have to see how that downright Old Testament full-court press works away from home against an Elite Eight type team. They're shooting the ball a lot better now, but that was a big problem earlier in the year. And they still stink from the free throw line. Leaving points at the charity stripe will kill you in the NCAA tournament. Just ask Memphis.

Having said that, I'm not sure exactly which team of this draw is going to challenge Louisville. You might be tempted to talk about Wake Forest, but I think Gary Williams really drew out the blueprint on how to beat that team with marginal talent. Williams packed the lane with a 3-2 zone and dared the Deacons to shoot 3-pointers, which they're wholly not comfortable with. Wake was fourth from the last in the nation in percentage of 3-pointers taken as a portion of its field goal attempts, and shoot in the low 30s when they do attempt from distance. And while James Johnson hurt Maryland, the Terps minimized that impact with the body-by-beer pong Dave Neal. For a team with three NBA first-rounders on it, Wake's offense is a whole lot of standing around. Defense is a great thing, but it's those scoring droughts that kill you in the NCAA tournament (think North Carolina's collapse against Georgetown two years ago).

I really like West Virginia in the bottom half of that bracket. Their underlying fundamentals are much better than their final record suggests. They rank in the top 15 in both adjusted offensive efficiency and adjusted defensive efficiency, which is a great predictor of postseason success. And they seem to be getting better. Just look at Devin Ebanks' game-by-game log to see the evolution of a player.

Shiloh Carder: I agree that this sets up nicely for Louisville. They get the first two rounds a few hours away in Dayton and then the Regional semifinals and finals up the road in Indianapolis. Doesn't get much better.

The only team I can see that can upset the Cardinals is Wake Forest. Wake has the talent, the size, the speed and the depth to go blow-for-blow with Louisville. However, the Deacs aren't playing their best basketball right now and could buckle under the pressure.

I don't like Michigan State at all. Kansas could make a run but I don't like the fact they've laid an egg twice in about a week. They could lose to the North Dakota State Bison just like they lost to the Bucknell Bison a few years ago. I think this corner of the bracket is all Louisville.

What I find interesting is that Arizona was the one surprise getting into the tournament yet people are picking them to upset Utah in the first round. I really want to see how this plays out because I think the Mountain West received no respect from the selection committee and the Pac-10 was given some love.

Also, this is an interesting bracket for coaches. You have Rick Pitino, Bill Self and Tom Izzo who have won titles (all the other regions have exactly two head coaches who have led their teams to titles). Thad Matta is a hell of a coach and Bob Huggins brings his unique style (both have been to Final Fours).