Why Kentucky Will Win The NCAA Championship

By BEN JACKEY
Special to One Great Season

Two horses have been stablemates for years. Every time the two hit the track, the younger horse beat the older, more experienced horse. One day, as the older horse neared his inevitable fate as pet food or glue, a dog wandered up to the young horse and asked, "Why don’t you just let the old guy win one?" The young horse responded, "Would you look at that? It's a talking dog."

Experience is great when it comes to brain surgery, base jumping and intimacy. When it comes to putting synthetic laminated rubber in a hoop, however, it means squat. If it did, Chuck Barkley would still be throwing down dunks instead of Burrito Supremes.   Talent > experience. Kentucky Wildcats  > the field.

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NCAA TOURNAMENT COVERAGE + MYTH MADNESS: 3 Tournament Trends To Ignore This Year
+ FREE ADVICE: Here's How To Win Your NCAA Office Pool
+ QUOTEBOOK: Selection Chairman Dan Guerrero Explains Himself
+ NCAA TOURNAMENT: First-Round Pairings Announced
+ MARCH MADNESS: Tourney No Longer Leads To April Sadness
+ COUNTDOWN: The Top 10 Title Games Since 1979
+ LIST: The Top 10 Analysts In College Basketball
+ LIST: The Top 10 Play-By-Play Men In College Basketball

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The same analogies could apply even to Kentucky’s coach, who's certainly no Tom Izzo on the chalkboard. I once heard John Calipari say, "We don’t have scouting reports. We don’t worry about what other teams do."  Pause for astonished silence.

That guy's won 32 games this season and something like 100 in the past three seasons. Wisdom and knowledge appear to be as overrated as Big Ten sports.

John Wall might be the most talented point guard ever to wear a collegiate uniform. More importantly, he might be as clutch as any player to wear a collegiate uniform. DeMarcus Cousins is as talented as he is immature. Patrick Patterson is as talented as he is mature. No one can match Kentucky when it comes to raw ability.

However, even the most obnoxious (yes, there are varying degrees) UK fan donning blue tinsel hair while playing hooky from the unemployment office and wearing a matching off-brand UK2K shirt with their spouse would admit Championship No. 8 will not be an easy task. The Cats' success will largely depend on the answers they get from their fifth "starter." Can Darius Miller score seven or eight points? Can Darnell Dodson make three or four threes to keep a defense honest?

Also, consider that Kentucky's second-round opponent could be the most talented team the Cats will have played all year thanks to an incredibly soft schedule. If that team is Texas, in nearby New Orleans, it could prove to be a stiff test. Playing quality opposition is, perhaps, the one place where experience would help these youthful Cats.

On the first Saturday in May in Kentucky, we crown the most talented young colt. But on the first Monday in April, just up the road in Indiana, we will crown a group of young thoroughbreds. Then we will take that talking dog behind the barn and shut him up Old Yeller-style.

Ben Jackey is a die-hard Kentucky fan who lives in Louisville.

3 Myths About The NCAA Tournament

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

It's lunchtime on Monday; by now you've surely filled out two brackets and plan to fill out three more. And you'll reason things the same way you did last year and the year before.

But did you win any money last year or the year before? I thought not.

If you abandon your familiar logic and consider a new approach, you just might look like you know what you're doing come Final Four weekend. Here are the issues you should think about:

+ Depth Is Key -- I've been back and forth about the depth issue for years, but I think I've finally got it figured out: It's overrated.

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NCAA TOURNAMENT COVERAGE + FREE ADVICE: Here's How To Win Your NCAA Office Pool
+ QUOTEBOOK: Selection Chairman Dan Guerrero Explains Himself
+ NCAA TOURNAMENT: First-Round Pairings Announced
+ MARCH MADNESS: Tourney No Longer Leads To April Sadness
+ COUNTDOWN: The Top 10 Title Games Since 1979
+ LIST: The Top 10 Analysts In College Basketball
+ LIST: The Top 10 Play-By-Play Men In College Basketball

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Syracuse and Ohio State will make nice runs in the tournament and they will do so without great contributions from their benches. Coaches adjust their approaches at least slightly during the tournament, and, especially in OSU's case, Thad Matta is keenly aware of his lack of depth. So he'll manage his games a little more.

Each half will be comprised of five four-minute bursts. Television timeouts are longer and more frequent in the tournament. Foul trouble certainly is a potential issue, but neither of these teams lost any of their games this year because of it. And injuries? Well, you might want to pray a little bit.

+ Freshmen Are Sophomores -- Every time you hear an analyst talk about how grown up some freshmen have become because they've now got 35 college games under their belts, you should send me a dollar. Make it ten dollars, actually.

But if the freshmen have grown up, so, too, have the sophomores, juniors, seniors and even fifth-year players against whom they'll be playing. Where the freshmen are still inexperienced -- perhaps immature (<cough>DeMarcus Cousins</cough>) -- is in the area of a high-pressure, single-elimination tournament. Don't buy the freshmen-are-sophomores line.

+ A 12 Always Beats A 5 -- It's always fashionable to pick one or two 12s over 5s because historically, this is just some inexplicable danger zone for higher-seeded teams. Since the field expanded to 64-ish teams, 12 seeds have won exactly 33 out of 100 first-round games, a markedly better winning percentage than 11 seeds. Two No. 12s won last year. North Carolina won the tournament last year as a 12 seed. Just kidding.

The bottom line here is that 12 seeds win more than they probably should. But trying to predict which of the four 12 seeds will win when the position only wins 33 percent of the time means you'll most likely pick an upset where an upset won't happen, and then you'll pick the seeds to play out where the upset actually does happen. And it's also a fact -- in that it is my opinion -- that this year's 12 seeds won't win one game.

So stay away from picking the 12-over-5 upset, but if you don't, if you absolutely must pick a No. 12 to win, please don't tell everyone you knew Cornell was going to beat Temple. At least give credit to Jay Bilas because he's the only reason you will have picked it.

5 Tips On How To Fill Out Your NCAA Bracket

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

You may have a co-worker who comes in to the office on Mondays during the fall lamenting having started this guy or benching that one on his boring fantasy football team.

Or you might actually be that annoying colleague.

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NCAA TOURNAMENT COVERAGE + FREE ADVICE: Here's How To Win Your NCAA Office Pool
+ QUOTEBOOK: Selection Chairman Dan Guerrero Explains Himself
+ NCAA TOURNAMENT: First-Round Pairings Announced
+ MARCH MADNESS: Tourney No Longer Leads To April Sadness
+ COUNTDOWN: The Top 10 Title Games Since 1979

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If you are that person, chances are good you're the same type of douchebag who likes to pick upsets galore in his office pool, knowing that for every 10 "this is the year a 16 beats a 1" picks, there's one Siena or George Mason that you might get right. And subsequently boast to those co-workers with logic you stole from Joe Lunardi's latest column.

So instead of trying too hard to look like the smart guy, why not just focus on winning the cash in your office pool?

If that's something you think you might be interested in, then just follow these five tips below:

1.) Don't pick many first-weekend upsets. Upsets are called upsets because they are surprises that are difficult to predict. Not many people picked Davidson in 2008 because they either hadn't heard of Davidson, hadn't heard of Stephen Curry or had no idea he was going to play lights out. When you pick some upsets, you'll get most of them wrong, and then the upsets you don't pick will actually hit, so it's a double-whammy, all for the sake of a few early round points that you don't necessarily need. The real value is earned in the later rounds.

2.) Don't pick the heavy favorite to win it all. This advice would have ruined you last year because everyone knew North Carolina was by far the best team, but this year might be a good year for you to try it. Everyone is understandably jocking Kansas right now, but are the Jayhawks as good this year as North Carolina was last year? No. If you're heading into Final Four weekend as a contender and everyone around you has Kansas, but you have Kentucky, guess who takes home the pile of cash and the loose women if the Wildcats win, which is hardly a ridiculous notion?

3.) Approach your bracket the way coaches prepare their teams for the tournament. Don't look at the empty white sheet and assume you have to have a bunch of bluebloods in the Elite Eight and Final Four. Break your forecasting down into two-game tournaments and think about the matchups within the matchups. Who wins the subregional? Who wins the regional? Who advances in the Final Four?

4.) Pick some upsets. I know this mostly runs contrary to the first point above, but you don't need to load up on one- and two-point wins on the first weekend. If you want to stay in the hunt for the loot, pick a couple of 3 and 4 seeds to beat 2 and 1 seeds on that second weekend.

5.) If you disagree with me so far, then I only have one tip left for you: Have the secretary who doesn't know anything about college basketball fill out your bracket. A gal I met recently told me one of her girlfriends won $10,000 -- yes, $10,000 -- in her office pool last year despite knowing nothing about the sport.

If you have some tips to share with the tens of thousands of One Great Season readers, please click here to share them.

Quotes From Selection Committee Chairman Dan Guerrero

As they always do, the fine folks at CBS interviewed the Selection Committee Chairman immediately following the release of the NCAA Tournament field of 65 teams.

Here's a bullet-pointed list of soundbites from this year's chair, Dan Guerrero, as spoken to Jim Nantz and Clark Kellogg:

On Duke getting a higher No. 1 seed than Syracuse:
+ "As we evaluated the top four teams, we actually threw West Virginia in the mix. All five of those teams had terrific resumes. We looked at the body of work (for all of them). We put a lot of value on the way Duke finished."

On where Duke would have been seeded had it not won the ACC Tournament:
+ "We had some contingency plans put in place. There was a possibility that could have occurred. We knew there were a lot of teams that were going to be in the mix. We wanted to give every team consideration."

When asked how many teams, Guerrero replied: "Two hands."

+ "(We were) looking at everything. The tough part of this deal is selection. We wanted to make sure we gave everyone a fair shot."

CBS analyst Greg Anthony didn't try to be polite when he asked what many on Twitter were thinking throughout the 6 o'clock hour: "How could you possibly see (Duke) being a better seed than Syracuse?"
+ "The big center for Syracuse got banged up. The reports we were getting back from Syracuse have been positive, but winning their conference tournament carried the day (for Duke)."

On having to shut out bubble teams:
+ "I feel for every one of those teams; there's no question about it. But we look at a number of things. And it's not necessarily how you finish, but it's how you do throughout the course of the year."

On how the injury to Robbie Hummel affected Purdue's seeding:
+ "The Hummel situation was unique because we had an opportunity to see Purdue play without him. We had to be certain we placed them where we thought it was most appropriate. Without him in the lineup, Purdue is a very different basketball team. There's no question about that."

2010 NCAA Tournament Pairings

Below is a list of first-round games in the 2010 NCAA men's college basketball tournament, set to start at eight sites around the country on Thursday.

MIDWEST (St. Louis)

Oklahoma City
Thursday, March 18
No. 1 Kansas vs. No. 16 Lehigh
No. 8 UNLV vs. No. 9 Northern Iowa

Spokane
Friday, March 19
No. 5 Michigan State vs. No. 12 New Mexico State
No. 4 Maryland vs. No. 13 Houston

Providence
Thursday, March 18
No. 6 Tennessee vs. No. 11 San Diego State
No. 3 Georgetown vs. No. 14 Ohio U.

Milwaukee
Friday, March 19
No. 7 Oklahoma State vs. No. 10 Georgia Tech
No. 2 Ohio State vs. No. 15 UC-Santa Barbara

WEST (Salt Lake City)

Buffalo
Friday, March 19
No. 1 Syracuse vs. No. 16 Vermont
No. 8 Gonzaga vs. No. 9 Florida State

San Jose
Thursday, March 18
No. 5 Butler vs. No. 12 UTEP
No. 4 Vanderbilt vs. No. 13 Murray State

Milwaukee
Friday, March 19
No. 6 Xavier vs. No. 11 Minnesota
No. 3 Pittsburgh vs. No. 14 Oakland

Oklahoma City
Thursday, March 18
No. 7 BYU vs. No. 10 Florida
No. 2 Kansas State vs. No. 15 North Texas

EAST (Syracuse)

New Orleans
Thursday, March 18
No. 1 Kentucky vs. No. 16 East Tennessee State
No. 8 Texas vs. No. 9 Wake Forest

Jacksonville
Friday, March 19
No. 5 Temple vs. No. 12 Cornell
No. 4 Wisconsin vs. No. 13 Wofford

San Jose
Thursday, March 18
No. 6 Marquette vs. No. 11 Washington
No. 3 New Mexico vs. No. 14 Montana

Buffalo
Friday, March 19
No. 7 Clemson vs. No. 10 Missouri
No. 2 West Virginia vs. No. 15 Morgan State

SOUTH (Houston)

Jacksonville
Friday, March 19
No. 1 Duke vs. No. 16 Arkansas Pine Bluff-Winthrop winner
No. 8 California vs. No. 9 Louisville

Spokane
Friday, March 19
No. 5 Texas A&M vs. No. 12 Utah State
No. 4 Purdue vs. No. 13 Siena

New Orleans
Thursday, March 18
No. 6 Notre Dame vs. No. 11 Old Dominion
No. 3 Baylor vs. No. 14 Sam Houston State

Providence
Thursday, March 18
No. 7 Richmond vs. No. 10 Saint Mary's
No. 2 Villanova vs. No. 15 Robert Morris