… with no significant surprises. It’s been the most predictable, plain-vanilla first week that I can remember. A #6 beat a #3 today. Big deal. All of the number ones are in it, and all of the number twos except St. John’s.
In the West-Midwest half of the brackets, the remaining match-ups are 1-4, 1-4, 2-3, and 10-3. In other words, it’s seven of the top eight seeds, with the sole interloper being Calipari’s Arkansas squad.
In the East/South half, it’s 1-4, 1-5, 2-6, 2-6, so no underdogs remain.
As you can see from the above, #10 Arkansas is the only surviving team with a seed worse than 6th.
How predictable was it?
- More than 30 entrants in the annual ESPN contest picked all of the Sweet 16 correctly!
- 14 of the 16 remaining teams were nationally ranked in the final polls, the exceptions being 6th-seeded Ole Miss and 10th-seeded Arkansas. (BYU was also seeded 6th, but was ranked high in the polls and should probably have been seeded higher. Their national ranking was better than Arizona’s, Kentucky’s or Purdue’s, and those three teams were seeded third or fourth.)
The oddsmakers don’t foresee many tight games next week. The better seeds are all pretty heavy favorites, except that Michigan State is only 2.5 points over Ole Miss, and it’s wise to be cautious about that one, because Ole Miss looked great in crushing third-seeded Iowa State. (That game was 73-48 at one point.)
Another fun note is last season’s coaching change of BYU’s Mark Pope to UK and UK’s Calipari to Arkansas seems to have benefitted everyone as all 3 teams made the Sweet 16 for the first time in years.