Call me a Big 12 homer, but I totally buy into that league as the best in the country this season. And that leads me to pick an all-Big 12 national championship game.
This is not a matchup I would have picked two weeks ago before injuries hit both Duke (Caleb Foster on top of Patrick Ngongba) and Michigan (reserve guard L.J. Cason). Though I still picked both of those teams to make it to Indianapolis, I’m not 100 percent sold about them reaching the title game — or cutting down the nets. Instead, I’m putting my faith in Tommy Lloyd and a Wildcat program that hasn’t reached the Final Four since 2001. Arizona has the talent to win it all as well as the toughness it requires after surviving the Big 12 season. Jaden Bradley is the kind of guard that can put a title contender on his back and hit big shot after big shot when his team needs it. It’s hard not to love (and trust) him.
I picked a couple of upsets in the first round, mostly due to the volatility of the higher-seeded team. I picked Santa Clara to upset Kentucky (a very Jekyll-and-Hyde team), VCU to upset UNC (largely due to Caleb Wilson’s injury) and Penn to upset Illinois (which has lost three of five coming into the NCAA Tournament). OK, the Penn pick is mostly due to recency bias; after watching TJ Power score 44 points and grab 14 rebounds in the Ivy League championship game, I just want to see him take over a game again. Well, and it would be kind of amazing if Fran McCaffery pulled off a big March win in his first year at Penn after failing to make it out of the first weekend his entire tenure at Iowa.
Ultimately, I wouldn’t be shocked if the bracket remains fairly chalky. It has been that way the last two seasons, with a lot of the credit/blame going to the NIL era. We are seeing individual players move up from mid-major programs to Power 4/Big East schools, so the mid-major teams themselves no longer have as many hidden gems or veteran-laden squads. Still, here’s hoping Cinderella finds at least one slipper!
