Breaking Down the East

With so many heavyweights at the top of this bracket, there's little consensus among the pundits. I keep hearing that Florida will make the Sweet 16 because they were hot down the stretch. But just as many others say that Florida will choke, and the Jayhawk-slaying Villanova Wildcats will advance. At the bottom of the bracket, UConn is getting a lot of love for being defending champs, while others love Kansas because of their seniors. With those two teams, I think that the media tends to get blinded by the allure of the familiar. We know the names of the UConn and Kansas players, therefore we can trust them, right? The problem is that tournament experience just isn't a reliable predictor of success.

In keeping with my strategy of going inside-out with my bracket picks this year, I decided before Selection Sunday that North Carolina would be one of my Final Four teams. Even after the brackets came out, with the and I realized that UNC is in the group of death, I'm sticking to my guns. The battle-tested Heels were the best team in the nation's best conference, so they won't blink when facing a big-name school (including UConn, which lost to the Heels at home). North Carolina is the pick