Breaking down the Midwest

I've been in love with Oklahoma State for weeks. I thought to myself, "here's an athletic, balanced, senior-laden team, that made the Final Four last year. I'm gonna pick these guys to meet Illinois in the title game." Then the brackets came out and darned if they weren't in the same bracket as the Illini. That demonstrates the lesson: don't get all hot and bothered until the brackets come out.

Outside of the top two seeds, this is the least interesting bracket in my view. I still don't believe in Arizona, (given their tournament track record) while B.C. and and Alabama are lightweight #4 and #5 seeds. I expect to see some upsets in the first weekend by UWM and LSU .

So what to do about the Illinois-Oklahoma St. conundrum? This is probably the hardest decision of my entire bracket. The Illini have a whole lot of similarities to last year's Stanford team (a workmanlike team, a perfect record until the last game of the season, a weak conference that raises skepticism) but they have great talent to plug into their team-first system. Okie State will make for a great opponent, but Illinois just has too many weapons.