Tourney Tip-off

The reason that Selection Sunday is one of the best sports days of the year is that when's over, your excitement doen't end. It's the rare "event" day that only signals the beginning of better days to come. I'll breakdown each of the brackets later this week, but first there are a few things on my mind regarding the tournament:

* If there's one team that deserves to be angry, it's Louisville. They had only four losses on the year, they won their conference by two games and won their conference tournament. For this they're reward was a measly #4 seed? They deserved a #2 at bare minimum. The worst part about this is that they're in the same bracket with the toughest #5 seed in the tournament, Georgia Tech.

* Every Selection Sunday I marvel at Dick Vitale's transportation proficiency. He finished announcing the ACC tournament final at about noon today. That means that he made it from an arena in Washington D.C. to a desk chair in Bristol, CT in about three and a half hours. Does he just have his own rope ladder-equipped helicopter hovering outside the arena every year?

* I still can see no rational reason for the committee to name the bracket regionals for their city rather than their region. Did anyone have a problem with the East, Midwest, South and West names? Now you have utter confusion- when someone mentions "the Syracuse bracket" are they talking about where the Orangemen are playing or the East regional at the Carrier dome?

* Since Illinois is the overall top team in the tournament, I still don't understand why they don't get to play the winner of Tuesday's play-in game. Jim Nantz explained that it was because the play-in winner needs to have three days off, but to me that's bogus. Just because Illinois is locked in to playing on Thursday, that doesn't mean that they should have to forgo the reward of playing the weakest team. It wouldn't be the end of the world for the Oakland/Alabama A&M winner play to play on two days rest.

* Last year I explained the six strategies one can use for filling out a bracket. After last year's debacle (in which I picked Gonzaga as my champ) I swore off the Comprehensive Breakdown and Go with the Gut strategies. The Live by the Seed, Die by the Seed method is probably the most statistically sound of the options, but this year I don't think it's the way to go. When you look at the teams, it's clear that UNC and Illinois were definite #1 seeds, but the next 14 teams are all at about the same level. Nobody can say with any confidence that #4 seeds like Syracuse and Louisville couldn't beat #1 seeds like Duke and Washington. Because those seed designations near the top are essentially a wash, I think gonna turn to the Crown and Retrace strategy this year. There are two strong teams this year so once I decide which one will take the top prize, I'll just work my way backwards till I reach the tourney pool promiseland.