Monday, March 12, 2007

TNR's March Madness Blog

The New Republic has a basketball blog in time for March Madness. There is a lot of gasbaggery mixed with pretension going on over there, but it's probably worth a view.


This might be one of the most balanced brackets we have seen in some time. As for the bubble teams, it is hard to work up too much outrage. Syracuse and Drexel would seem to have the strongest cases, and I have to wonder why stanford got in, but I think the selection committee has done better than at any time in the past few years even if a few potential bubble teams from midmajors played their way in and made things a bit easier.


My only early advice: Don't go all chalk. In other words, don't pencil in all of the one and two seeds. At the same time, and more importantly, don't get too clever by half either. There usually is a reason why a team is an 8 seed. For every Arizona in '97 or Villanova in '85 or NC State in '83 there are a million brackets ruined by someone thinking that they have a ten seed that is going to shock the world. You are much wiser looking for this year's version of the 2006 Florida team than for this year's George Mason. The reality is that picking an upset and being wrong runs you the risk of having that pick haunt you for the rest of the tournament. Your belief that Virginia Commonwealth is going to the Elite Eight is the reason why Sally in accounting is going to beat you soundly by picking teams she has heard of, going with high seeds most of the time, and having her upset team last for one round before they run into a team that has those pretty uniforms that also happens to be a three seed.


The idea of a play-in tournament for the last four slots still stands as the Greatest. Idea. Ever.

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