The Madness Begins

It's my favorite time of year. March Madness!!!! The brackets are out and the tournament technical starts tomorrow with the first four game but everyone else starts paying attention on Thursday. One note, last year VCU started play on Tuesday of last years tournament and made it all the way to the Final Four. Could that happen this year? Possibly, but not likely. The tournament is all about matchups. I'm going to take a look at a few of the matchups that are intriguing to me for this week slate of games from each region. First up the South:

Iowa St vs. UConn: This is a classic case of the turtle and the hare. Iowa St. is the turtle and UConn is the hare. Meaning the Cyclones will try to slow UConn down and make it a half-court game. UConn likes to run and have an uptempo game. Plus you have an experienced, HOF coach, Jim Calhoun versus a second year coach Fred Hoiberg. I'll take the old coach and the defending champ in this one.

Wichita St. vs. VCU: This will probably be one the better games of the tournament. Both these teams play similar styles. Both have young and up-coming head coaches. Both are mid-majors who experienced success last year(VCU to the Final Four, Wichita St. won the NIT) and its the classic 5-12 matchup. Doesn't get any better than that.

East

Gonzaga vs. West Virginia: Not a lot of glamorous games in this bracket. Since I am typing this, watch how a lot of the upsets come from this region.

West

Memphis vs. SLU, New Mexico vs. Long Beach St., Louisville vs. Davidson, Murray St. vs Colorado St.. I love this region. You got a good mix of experience coaches and young coaches. Rick Majareus at St. Louis Univ, Josh Pastner at Memphis, Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, Steve Alford and Billy Donovan just to name a few. Plus there are a lot of underrated players/stars in this bracket. You have Will Barton of Memphis and Casper Ware of Long Beach St (probably the two best pro prospects) and Bradley Beal from Florida. This probably has the "best" teams in the tournament. By that I mean teams that don't rely just on one guy to shoulder the load. Teams that have multiple scorers and play tenacious defense. SLU, Mizzou, Louisville, Memphis are all teams that play well together and can make some serious noise this week.

Midwest

Not a lot of great matchups initially in this region. Looks like an easy run for North Carolina or Kansas. Possible upsets by Creighton or Georgetown could make it interesting.

For the 4th straight year, I created a group for us to compete in a bracket game. Go to Pick'em and look for Momo's Sports Musings and the password is tourney. I'll post update throughout the week.