NCAA Tournament: Region Breakdown

East
First Impressions: How stacked is the East? Give it a heavy dose of Xanax, a television show and a creepy, sycophantic lawyer/lover and this region is Anna Nicole Smith circa 2002. I wrote that last year about this very same region, and it ended up not disappointing. This year, North Carolina is back atop the bracket, while Tennessee replaces Georgetown as the up-and-coming #2 seed that will challenge the Heels for the berth in San Antonio. Throw in a resurgent Louisville team, a poorly seeded Butler squad and a very quiet Notre Dame and this has the makings of a fun region. Oh, and you might have heard of the #12 seed here too; the George Mason Patriots. About this team people are saying, "yeah, but this isn't that George Mason of '06," as if at this point in '06 everyone was predicting that George Mason team was going to be making a Final Four run too.

Best 1st Round Game: #7 Butler vs. #10 South Alabama
As it usually is with these deep regions, the first round games aren't too interesting. As a fan, you kind of hope for relative chalk to set-up some interesting games later on in the bracket. This one is kind of interesting because most people think Butler was seeded too low and South Alabama was seeded too high. I guess that means Butler should win this one by a score of 168-9.

Best Upset Possibility: #11 St. Joseph's over #6 Oklahoma
Kelvin Sampson is no longer at Oklahoma, but his spirit could still be haunting the locker room.

Best Possible 2nd Round Game: #2 Tennessee vs. #7 Butler
A good majority of teams that make deep runs into the Tournament have at least one "escape" game on that road. I think this will be Tennessee's.

Worst Possible 2nd Round Game: #1 North Carolina vs. #9 Arkansas
When you get wiped off the court by a Georgia team playing its third game in 28 hours, chances are you aren't going to beat the #1 overall seed in the Tournament.

Early Final Four Prediction: Tennessee
A Carolina/Tennessee Regional Final would be fantastic.

Midwest
First Impressions: I think this is the most wide open region. Kansas has experienced little Tournament success with Bill Self, Georgetown is capable of beating, and losing, to a fair amount of teams in the field, Wisconsin is dangerous because they can actually bore opponents to death, Vanderbilt actually beat Georgetown in last year's Tournament before the refs decided to step in, USC and Kansas St. have players capable of taking over a game and wouldn't be ironic for Gonzaga to make the Final Four in the first year nobody expects anything from them since 1999? Anyone can emerge from the Midwest... Except Clemson. Because, come on.

Best 1st Round Game: #6 USC vs. #11 Kansas State
With so many local teams in the Tournament (Georgetown, George Mason, American), I'm worried one of those games is going to be on at the same time as this one, thus depriving the D.C. area the chance of seeing OJ Mayo and Michael Beasley in HD. (I'll still watch on my computer, but it won't be the same.) I'm also wondering how long the local CBS affiliate will stick with, say, the American game before switching to something else? I remember when Howard made it as a #16 seed a few years ago, they were pretty quick with the trigger when the game got out of hand; I hope it will be the same this time around.

Best Upset Possibility: #15 UMBC vs. #2 Georgetown
Here me out on this one: For those who don't know, UMBC stands for University of Maryland - Baltimore County. (Good to know at least one school in the U of M system got their team into the Big Dance.) From all accounts, they're a pretty solid squad. I watched a little of the second half of their conference tournament final and was impressed with the Terrier's ball movement and attacking defense. Anyway, here's my theory (a theory that, the more I think about, makes no sense): Because UMBC is located near D.C., the team has likely seen Georgetown play a lot; not just on national TV but on the local MASN broadcasts that are shown both in DC and Baltimore. As much as any opposing team in a different conference can be familiar, I think the Hoyas will be relatively familiar to UMBC. That might eliminate some of the fear factor involved in these types of games and could give UMBC a little boost. It'd be like, "hey, that's Roy Hibbert. He's big and tall. I know he disappears for long stretches of the game and gets into foul trouble. He's not so bad! I can take him." Yeah, that makes no sense.

Best Possible 2nd Round Game: #2 Georgetown vs. #10 Davidson
In their close loss to Maryland in the last NCAA Tournament, I remember Davidson running a sort of modified Princeton offense, very much like the one Georgetown does. There's a good chance I'm wrong on this, but I'm also thinking I saw it when Davidson played Carolina tough earlier in the year too. Anyway, I like watching that kind of basketball and I like watching Georgetown and Stephon Curry is pretty damn good; so this could be a good game for the purist in you.

Worst Possible 2nd Round Game: #1 Kansas vs. #9 Kent State
Kansas/UNLV would have been awesome if this were 1991 and Kansas/Kent State could have been cool if Antonio Gates were still ballin' for the Golden Flashes. But it's not and he's not, so we're left with a likely Jayhawk cakewalk.
(Note: Usually whichever game Wisconsin plays is a shoo-in for the "worst possible" slot, but since they're going to play the winner of Mayo/Beasley (doesn't that sound like a pharmaceutical company?), they get a pass this time. I really hate watching Wisconsin play; that's why I never move them far in my Tournament. I feel that if I do I'm willing boredom upon myself.)

Early Final Four Prediction: Kansas
If my team isn't in it, I'm always pulling for either Kansas or Georgetown. So, part of me is hoping those two won't meet-up in the Elite Eight. But the other part of me is threatening to kick the first part's ass because KU/Georgetown would be awesome. If ever there was a Tournament to hope for chalk at the end of the bracket, this is it.

South
First Impressions: Honestly, my first impressions was that there are a lot of schools that begin with "M" in this region.

Best 1st Round Game: #7 Miami (FL) vs. #10 St. Mary's
Odds are, you haven't seen either of these teams play.

Best Upset Possibility: #12 Temple over #5 Michigan State
Everyone, myself included, always picks Michigan State to advance a ways into the Tournament because they are such a well-coached, disciplined basketball team. Usually, they're right. But three times since 2002, Tom Izzo's clubs have lost in the first round. No knock on Izzo, mind you, but it happens more than you'd think.

Best Possible 2nd Round Game: #4 Pittsburgh vs. #5 Michigan State
On paper, this is the kind of game you get excited about...

Worst Possible 2nd Round Game: #4 Pittsburgh vs. #5 Michigan State
... Then you turn it on and realize MSU is really, really boring. Just because I have crazy respect for Tom Izzo doesn't mean I enjoy watching his teams play. Plus, Jamie Dixon looks like a Hyundai salesman. It creeps me out.

Early Final Four Prediction: Pittsburgh
Memphis can't shoot free throws and Texas is coached by Rick Barnes. Pitt was the next logical choice.

West
First Impressions: I'd say this was a cakewalk for UCLA, but the word "walk" implies the Bruins would have to exert some energy to win it. For real, the West has the worst #2 seed, #3 seed, #4 seed and #6 seed in the bracket.

Best 1st Round Game: #6 Purdue vs. #11 Baylor
Instead of spending 30 minutes talking about Virginia Tech yesterday, ESPN should have been focusing on how amazing a story the Baylor basketball team has been this year. Now, I'm not sure they deserved an at-large bid after collapsing down the stretch, but that they were even in a position to get one is a testament to the fantastic job Scott Drew has done in rebuilding a program devastated by the murder of a player by his teammate and the subsequent cover-up job by coaches.

Best Upset Possibility: #14 Georgia over #3 Xavier
What, you think they can't? Although, as my buddy Klinny, a Georgia alum, pointed out: The Bulldogs got the shaft from the NCAA in regards to scheduling. They probably should have gotten assigned to a Friday/Sunday pod due to their exhausting schedule this weekend, but I can understand that doing so might have been difficult. Still, if Georgia had to play on Thursday, did they really have to be playing in the first game of the day?!

Best Possible 2nd Round Game: #2 Duke vs. #7 West Virginia
At least let's hope so, as this game has the best chance of getting the dreaded 12:00 Saturday spot on CBS. For some reason, CBS schedules just one game for noon on the Tournament's first Saturday every year. More often than not, Duke gets that spot and subsequently plays in the most boring game imaginable that viewers are stuck with because there's no other game to switch to. I don't know why CBS does this; at one point during the day they have three games going on at once, which would make it easy to bump one of the pods up in the day to noon so we wouldn't have the possibility of getting stuck with a dog game. This wasn't a problem last year though, as the classic Ohio State/Xavier battle was the CBS noon game.

Worst Possible 2nd Round Game: #3 Xavier vs. #6 Purdue
I dozed off just writing abo-asdfjf;lsdfj;grdfkzml;ijdg.

Early Final Four Prediction: UCLA
This would be three straight Final Fours for UCLA, a pretty amazing feat that probably hasn't been done since Michigan State in '99, '00 and '01. It's under-the-radar though because while UCLA was going to back-to-back Final Fours, Florida was winning back-to-back Final Fours.