March Madness fast approaching

Well it is almost that time of the year again, the most won­der­ful time of the year. No, not Christ­mas, I’m talk­ing about March Mad­ness. It is with­out a doubt the cra­zi­est, most unpre­dictable and most enter­tain­ing time of the year in sports.

So far this sea­son it has been a pretty vanilla year. There have been some great games, a fair share of buzzer beat­ers, but all in all not the best reg­u­lar sea­son we have seen. And I’m here to tell you that is a great thing lead­ing into the tour­na­ment, because there is no real dom­i­nant team that you can point to and say, “they are the favorite and will run through everybody”.

Granted Ken­tucky and Syra­cuse have been the cream of the crop this year, each hav­ing only one loss, and on the road, and also mul­ti­ple qual­ity wins so far. Ken­tucky has the top tal­ent, albeit in fresh­man, and Syra­cuse is prob­a­bly the deep­est team. But to say that either of these teams is invin­ci­ble is just plain foolish.

Duke and North Car­olina have shown flashes of bril­liance and have the tal­ent, and most impor­tantly Hall of Fame coaches, so you can never count them out either.

The hottest team in the coun­try is prob­a­bly Michi­gan St., who under Tom Izzo is always a threat come tour­ney time and over the past 15 years seems to reside in the Final Four.

What make pre­dict­ing the col­lege bas­ket­ball cham­pi­onship so dif­fi­cult are the seed­ing and the brack­ets. There always seems to be at least three teams that get snubbed and sub­se­quently three lesser teams that get in and because of that there is also always one bracket that seems impos­si­ble to get out of and one that seems like ten out of six­teen teams that have a chance.

So what I’m try­ing to say is, it is almost impos­si­ble to pre­dict a cham­pion before the brack­ets are set, but that is what I am going to try and do, because it is also more fun this way, so here we go, these are my Final Four and cham­pi­onship predictions.

First off, there is always a sleeper team, so let’s get that team out of the way. The Kansas State Wild­cats are that team for me this year. Yes, they are in a major con­fer­ence and I know to some peo­ple sleeper means a mid-major pro­gram, like But­ler, but that is not the case. They are as of now 18–8 and 7–7 in con­fer­ence, with wins over top ten oppo­nents in Mis­souri and Bay­lor and a close loss to Kansas. They remind me a lot of UCONN last year, strug­gled against mediocre teams, but played great against the best teams and I love the way they are play­ing right now.

The next team in my Final Four is the Michi­gan State Spar­tans. Like I men­tioned ear­lier, no team is play­ing bet­ter ball right now than the Spar­tans. They are tour­na­ment tested still hav­ing key play­ers, like Dray­mond Green, left over from their Final Four run two years ago. And come tour­ney time, no coach does more with less than Tom Izzo does.

Next up, the top ranked Ken­tucky Wild­cats. The cats are led by fresh­man Anthony Davis, who very pos­si­bly could win every National player of the year award and also if he should choose to leave for the NBA after this sea­son be the top pick in the draft. The dif­fer­ence between this fresh­man led Ken­tucky team under Cali­pari as opposed to the last two sea­sons is they actu­ally have some expe­ri­ence in sopho­mores Ter­rance Jones and Doron Lamb and senior Dar­ius Miller to go along with the inex­pe­ri­ence. That gives this Ken­tucky team three play­ers with Final Four expe­ri­ence to go along with the pure raw tal­ent, some­thing they lacked the pre­vi­ous two sea­sons. This team has the abil­ity to be scary good, all time good.

The final piece of this puz­zle is the Syra­cuse Orange, the deep­est and most expe­ri­enced of all the teams in the coun­try in my opin­ion. They have the key pieces, a senior point guard in Scoop Jar­dine and a senior big man in Kris Joseph. They have a Hall of Fame coach in Jim Boe­heim and a deep bench. Those are the four keys to mak­ing a deep run come March.

Cham­pi­onship time now, time to pick the win­ner of the whole thing, granted I have no idea how the brack­ets will play out, but my edu­cated guess is that Syra­cuse will defeat Kansas State and Michi­gan State will pull off the upset of Ken­tucky in the Final Four, set­ting up a Syra­cuse vs. Michi­gan St. final.

So, we are down to two for the title, the Syra­cuse Orange vs. the Michi­gan St. Spar­tans. Both teams are expe­ri­enced and rugged and don’t mind get­ting down and dirty and play­ing a phys­i­cal brand of ball. Big men Kris Joseph and Dray­mond Green will be a match-up for the ages, should the refs allow them to play their games. The dif­fer­ence to me in this game will come down to guard play and I give the edge to Syra­cuse and senior point guard Scoop Jar­dine. I also like the Orange three point shoot­ing a lit­tle bit bet­ter. I think Syra­cuse will win a close one, 66 –61.

There you have it folks, the Orange will cut down the nets for the sec­ond time in their his­tory, enjoy the games, it should be a great month.