Who-Picked-Who

Hang Loose Kansas: 21 out of 21 brackets picked KU to the Elite Eight and two-thirds of the field picked Kansas to win it all

This field is the closest of any Citrus Basket to date. There are 13 brackets out of 21 within 4 points of the lead. 3 brackets have all 8 of their picks still alive and 7 brackets have a potential of getting 7 correct. Folks kept with the high seeds advancing to the Elite Eight and it has paid off big. I included an article about the death of Cinderella at the tail end of this post breaking down the 2007 Sweet 16.

If you are trailing and you have Kansas winning it all, that won’t do the trick alone; you will need to find another advantage somewhere else in the bracket to make up the difference or separate yourself from the pack. The 6 brackets tied for 8th with 46 points all have picked Kansas to win the championship. Plus there are 3 brackets ahead of that group with Kansas winning, including the co-leader Sperry.

Even Nayt Dogg, who is tied for last place, yet is only 8 points behind the leader, could sneak out a win with a perfect storm (first things first Nayt Dogg, Vandi needs to pull off that upset or your out).

The two teams who caused the worst damage to the brackets were Texas, who raised the most havoc hands down, and Wisconsin. The game which will make the biggest difference in the next round will be Texas A&M (13 picks) against Memphis (6 picks). Here are a few lists to see how many brackets picked which teams followed by individual picks then the article:

Elite Eight
18 : Florida
1 : Butler (Truffle)
9 : Oregon
2 : UNLV (Stoph, Bev)
21 : Kansas
0 : South Illinois
5 : Pittsburgh
12 : UCLA
11 : North Carolina
0 : South California
1 : Vanderbilt (Nayt Dogg)
17 : Georgetown
18 : Ohio State
1 : Tennessee (Gern Blanston)
13 : Texas A&M
6 : Memphis

Runner Up
5 North Carolina
5 Ohio State
3 Georgetown
3 Texas
2 Kansas
1 Florida
1 Washington State
1 Gonzaga

Championship Picks
14 Kansas
3 Florida
2 Georgetown
2 Texas

Here is a list of what each person has left in their bracket:
(Possible Elite Eights) CHAMP/Runner Up/ final four, final four : Pts : Name

(8) KANSAS / Ohio State / georgetown, florida : 50 : Sperry
(7) GEORGETOWN / Kansas / ohio state, florida: 50 : Butterworth

(8) FLORIDA / North Carolina / texas a&m, kansas: 49 : KittyKatKevKev

(7) FLORIDA / Ohio State / north carolina, kansas: 48 : Van Ness
(6) TEXAS/ Kansas / ohio state, wisconsin: 48 : K Dees
(7) KANSAS/ Ohio State / north carolina, florida: 48 : Bev

(5) KANSAS / Texas / ohio state, maryland: 47 : Stoph

(8) KANSAS / Georgetown / ohio state, florida: 46 : Theresa Ann
(7) KANSAS / North Carolina / texas a&m, florida: 46 : Argo
(5) KANSAS / Georgetown / texas a&m, florida: 46 : Liam
(5) KANSAS / Ohio State / texas, maryland: 46 : Simba
(7) KANSAS / Texas / memphis, florida: 46 : Gern Blanston
(6) KANSAS / Washington State / memphis, wisconsin: 46 : Victoria

(6) TEXAS / Florida / texas a&m, kansas : 45 : Pa O’Neil
(5) GEORGETOWN / Gonzaga / ohio state, butler : 45 : Truffle
(6) KANSAS / Texas / texas a&m, florida : 45 : Kitty

(7) KANSAS / Georgetown / texas a&m, wisconsin : 44 : Ma O’Neil
(6) KANSAS / North Carolina / virginia, florida: 44 : Jim

(7) KANSAS / North Carolina / ohio state, wisconsin: 42 : Edward Feedtime
(6) FLORIDA / Ohio State / texas, ucla: 42 : Nayt Dogg
(6) KANSAS/ Ohio State / north carolina, florida : 42 : Spurgin

Power teams reign supreme in ‘07 tourney
Pat Forde

Cinderella, the plucky princess of March Madness, died a quick and undramatic death over the weekend. She was 12.

Check the chalk outline of her body, produced by the chalk-heavy outcomes in this NCAA Tournament: This marks the first time since 1995 that the Big Dance arrived at the Sweet 16 without at least one double-digit seed along for the ride.

Pause with us while we mourn Cindy’s passing for a moment.

Goodbye, Virginia Commonwealth. Sorry you couldn’t come along another round, but beating Duke and taking Pittsburgh to OT made for a pretty swell weekend.

Adios, Winthrop. At least you’ll always remember your first NCAA victory.

They were the last double-digit seeds standing. Without them, the tenor changes.

There is no George Mason or Bradley left in this dance -- no mid-major school that barely squeaked in and never was given a chance to win even a single game, much less two. No Wisconsin-Milwaukee of ‘05 (although that team’s coach is here, now dressed in orange). No Chattanooga or Valparaiso or Miami (Ohio) or Missouri State or Kent State, to name a few double-digit seeds that played into the second weekend in recent years.

But the fracturing of the fairy tale didn’t stop there. The big boys have eliminated every team seeded outside the top half of the 65-team bracket -- every team outside the top 28, in fact.

The 2007 version of a glass-slippered party crasher is No. 7 seed UNLV, which is a joke. As I’ve been saying since the brackets were unveiled, Vegas was criminally underrated by the selection committee. The Runnin’ Rebels were a 4- or 5-seed in underdog’s clothing.

By RPI, 13 of the top 21 teams in the country are still playing. The other three come in at No. 27 (Butler), No. 40 (USC) and No. 47 (Vanderbilt). The only team in the RPI top 10 to be evicted from Bracketville to date is No. 4 Wisconsin, which had the bad luck to draw UNLV in the second round.

What we’re left with are seven of the top eight seeds, nine of the top 12 and 10 of the top 16. It’s been 11 years since seven of the top eight seeds advanced to the Sweet 16 (and the one that didn’t was No. 1 seed Purdue, which was felled by Tubby Smith’s Georgia Bulldogs).

Of the nine teams I believed could win the whole thing, eight remain. Only Texas (I was seduced by Kevin Durant) has been dismissed.

Bottom line: Either the committee really did its job well (except for Vegas) or Cinderella has had a fatal four days.

This doesn’t mean she can’t (and won’t) rise from the dead in years to come. But for the time being, we’ll have to stuff a sock in all the parity talk. Or at least revise it down to, say, the top 30.

That’s about where the competitive balance seemed to stop this year, after only five first-round upsets by seed (three in the tossup 8-9 games) and five in the second round (three in the tossup 4-5 games). At least the games got closer and more dramatic Friday and Saturday, bookended by a distressingly dull Thursday and a rather unremarkable Sunday.

What we have left are 12 teams from the big six conferences. And with three from the Pac-10, three from the SEC, two from the Big East and two from the Big 12, no league has established undisputed bragging rights. (The ACC and Big Ten, with only a single team left apiece, have some explaining to do.)

Even the quartet of schools from the smaller conferences come wearing regulation basketball sneaks, not glass slippers.

Memphis, king of Conference USA, has been a national title contender two years running. UNLV of the Mountain West won 30 games and ranks 10th in the RPI.

Even Southern Illinois of the Missouri Valley Conference and Butler of the Horizon League didn’t exactly fall off the turnip truck on the way to the Sweet 16. Both were ranked for much of this season, sport tremendous power numbers and were locks to be at-large selections -- which, ultimately, they both were after losing in the final game of their league tournaments.

And they were respected enough by the selection committee to be seeded fourth and fifth, respectively.

Within the past five years, both schools got to the Sweet 16 the hard way, as double-digit seeds. Their progress up the seed ladder was in part paved by the mid-major successes of previous seasons.

Despite their well-earned seeds, SIU and Butler will revert back to major underdog status now. Butler takes on the defending national champion and overall No. 1 seed, Florida. Southern Illinois gets a shot at the hottest team in the tournament, Kansas.

If either wins, we’ll be back to rhapsodizing about the achievements of the little guys. But neither will qualify as Cinderella.

She’s stretched out on a cold slab in the March Madness morgue.