Breaking down the West

(As you can see, I'm hereby banishing the city names from the regionals)

I wholeheartedly agree with everyone carping over Washington getting the top seed. I've seen the Huskies in person and there's no way this team could hang with a team that has any kind of frontcourt. They live and die by the three which leaves them vulnerable to cold shooting nights. While they have certainly looked faster than their slower-tempoed Pac-10 foes, there are plenty of teams out there that can run with them. Don't forget, this was the exact same lineup that got beaten by UAB in the first round last year.

Now that we've eliminated U-Dub (who will get out-muscled by Pitt) we come to the extremely tough Louisville-Georgia Tech game. While it's tempting to be blinded by Tech's ACC tournament run, you can't ignore that Louisvillehad a better regular season and is even hotter than Tech- they've won 18 of their last 19. At the bottom of the bracket, I'm not getting burned by Gonzaga again, so it's Wake to the Elite Eight. Now the question is, can the Deacons' overcome their defensive shortcomings against a Louisville team that's solid top-to-bottom? I'm going with the stronger conference, so Wake Forest is the pick.