NCAA Round Two Update

Raise your hand if you have your Final Four teams remaining.

Let the record show that I did not raise my hand, thanks to USC drubbing my Texas squad. Perhaps the Trojans were looking for revenge for their football counterparts appearance in the Rose Bowl against the Longhorns two seasons ago. Or perhaps I misjudged how much Kevin Durant could carry his team.

I still feel good about half of my Final Four, but the sake of my pool, I'm a huge Butler fan this weekend. I picked Maryland to dump defending champ Florida back to the swamp, but I could really use Butler to take on that role now. After round two, in which THE Ohio State was given a couple favors en route to a thrilling come from behind overtime victory against in state rival Xavier, I am left with only nine Sweet Sixteen teams and only have two games perfectly paired up (Pitt/UCLA and Ohio State/Tennessee). My East bracket is finished as Boston College succumbed to Georgetown and my Final Four pick Texas, as mentioned above, lost to USC. I also had Washington State picked to beat George Washington (who had already lost to Vanderbilt...who beat Washington State).

Nervous about my Florida-Maryland Butler match-up? Definitely. Would I be surprised if Butler pulled one more win out? Not at all.

On a side note, I never did comment on how I'm pleased that the NCAA went back to calling each region by one of the cardinal directions, rather than after a city. Instead of the St. Louis region we have the Midwest Region. Something just doesn't sound right about hearing the "East Rutherford Region" in tourney basketball. But I see that change didn't affect the women's tourney.

Take a look at my most and least confident regions below and compare them to my previous post. Funny how one round changes everything.
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Bracket I'm most confident with heading into round three: West region (UCLA and Kansas moving on)
Bracket I'm least confident with: East region (I've got Texas beating UNC and Boston College beating Washington State)
Final Four picks: Oregon, UCLA, Memphis, Texas

Sweet 16 teams remaining: 9
Elite Eight Teams remaining: 5

Today's bold prediction: Take Clemson to beat the Syracuse Crybabies, er....Orangemen in the battle of the Orange in the NIT, but take West Virginia to win it all.