Bradley’s Bracket Fiasco: The champ sits in Tech’s regional
Greensboro, N.C. — Bradley’s Bracket Fiasco, now in its 23rd years, begins with an assessment of Georgia Tech: It got in, which is good; it got in the absolute toughest regional, which is less good. I’ve been thinking all season the Jackets have Final Four capability. Alas, I can’t see the No. 10 seed emerging from the mighty Midwest.
Then again, I’ve been wrong before, and I’m sure I’ll be wrong about 95 percent of these NCAA tournament picks. As ever, I invite you to play along in our online contest. The Fiasco prize is the accustomed and coveted Final Four sweatshirt, but this year if you enter our contest you’ll be automatically enrolled in a national pick-’em and you’ll have a chance to win $1 million.
You can enter the Fiasco by clicking here. And Fiasco rules can be found here.
OK, my picks. (I know you’re getting anxious.) Ohio State might be the only team in the country that can beat Kansas on a neutral floor, and somewhere the two got jammed into the same regional. I like the Jackets to get by Oklahoma State in the first round — I recall Tech beating the Cowboys in the Big Dance not long ago — but see the Jackets’ run ending there. The Buckeyes will take them down in Round 2, and the winner of the KU-OSU regional final in St. Louis will claim the national championship.
To the West: The temptation is great to pick Florida State, somehow only a No. 9 seed, over Syracuse in Round 2, but the Seminoles don’t make enough jump shots to beat the Orange zone. This tepid region will spawn a slew of upsets. (Try Murray State over Vanderbilt. Or BYU over Kansas State in Round 2. Or sixth-seeded Xavier reaching the regional final.) But nobody out here is beating the ‘Cuse.
Another great regional final looms in the East: Kentucky versus West Virginia. I’m intrigued by No. 3 seed New Mexico — former Jacket Craig Neal is Steve Alford’s chief assistant — but that’s the only team capable of spoiling the Wildcat/Mountaineer border war. On toughness and seasoning, I like the Mountaineers. What I don’t like: Two really good upset choices — No. 12 Cornell and No. 13 Wofford — are stuffed into the same subregional. (But don’t be shocked when Wofford reaches the Sweet Sixteen.)
In the South, Duke got a nice seed but an awful draw. The Blue Devils be oustedin Round 2 by Louisville, which is coached by Rick Pitino, who nearly eliminated Mike Krzyzewski’s best team 18 years ago but neglected to guard the inbounder. Here’s guessing he will this time. I’m also guessing the South final will be an all-Big East convocation, with Villanova — which hasn’t played well lately but landed a No. 2 seed in the softest region — skipping past Pitino’s Cards.
So that makes three Big East reps in the Final Four, none of which will win the NCAA title. West Virginia will reach the title game, where it will be undone by … drum roll, please … Kansas. Ohio State is playing beautifully and Evan Turner has been the nation’s MVP, but the Jayhawks have been the most consistent team all season. They have everything you need to win: Point guard in Sherron Collins, big man in Cole Aldrich, coach in Bill Self.
It’s against my nature ever to go with the chalk, but this time I am. I’m going with rock-chalkers. I’m going with KU. (Even though I swore years ago I’d never ever pick Kansas again. Consistency, I say, is the hobgoblin of small minds. And lousy brackets.)
And now I await your picks. Please enter. Please check your brackets often. And please don’t make too many unkind remarks about my picks. I get mighty sensitive this time of year.
And if you’d like to see my entire bracket, complete with idiotic upset picks, it can be found here.
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
147 comments Add your comment
Jax2020
March 14th, 2010
11:40 pm
It was great seeing Bobby Cremins in Greensboro sitting in the stands and cheering on the Yellow Jackets. I hope Paul Hewitt is sitting next to him next year.
Jax2020
March 14th, 2010
11:45 pm
Frank James! This is yo momma. Get back up here and help your brother Jesse do the dishes. Otherwise, you won’t get an allowance. And quit scaring the dog down there in the basement, he thinks you’re going to violate him again.
Jax2020
March 14th, 2010
11:51 pm
Now Burt you starred in a movie called “Gator” and then you say Go Noles. So exactly where do you want the Noles to go? I think you meant “Moles” as in the moles all over the faces of the skin-cancered and leather skinned tan chicks in that pecker-shaped appendage some call Florida. Dadgum it. I forgot. I was supposed to be nice to the moley Noles after y’all kicked Bobby out of the office. By the way, it’s alittle known fact, but brown M&M’s are actually harvested from the mole fields on Noles’ coeds’ faces.
Jax2020
March 14th, 2010
11:53 pm
Back to basketball. Tech maybe makes the S16. The Midwest is the Region of Death so no telling who comes out of there alive, though Kansas looks like the best bet. Duke won’t make the E8, and UGA, oh yeah, that’s right, they’ll be playin’ prison ball this spring.
JesseJames
March 14th, 2010
11:54 pm
M&M’s are moles cut off of tan chicks? Now that’s funny, I don’t care how many moles you have on your face.
FullMetalJacket
March 14th, 2010
11:59 pm
I won’t eat another brown M&M as long as I live. Thanks for a thorough treatment of the tourney in Greensboro, Mark. You’ve gone above and beyond if you’ve read half of these posts. Look forward to hearing from you in Wisconsin next week. I appreciate your college basketball knowledge and insight, and just as importantly, your informed objectivity. Those Tech fans like myself who would like to see Hewitt gone need to be more moderate in our language, probably, and we need your clear perspective on the situation to help realize that we’ll probably be stuck with him for awhile. Good night and God Bless all.
FullMetalJacket
March 15th, 2010
12:02 am
Thank you, Mark for the objective and informed analyses and perspectives on the tourney in Greensboro. I look forward to your insightful and thoughtful comments from Wisconsin later this week. (No this isn’t your momma. I just think you’ve done a good job.) I won’t eat brown M&M’s ever again, but that’s not your fault.
FullMetalJacket
March 15th, 2010
12:03 am
Good night everyone and God Bless. Remember, change your clocks!!! Spring Forward one hour. Adieu.
FullMetalJacket
March 15th, 2010
12:05 am
Good night and God bless everyone. A great weekend for Georgia Tech. Remember to adjust those clocks! Spring Forward an Hour. (A special note to UGA fans here: your GT bosses won’t accept your ignorance as an excuse for showing up an hour late tomorrow.)
macrotech
March 15th, 2010
12:07 am
Frank James…. I hear ya! Don’t forget, it ONLY took Decory Bryant five years to get his settlement! (In truth, it’s a terrible price to pay…both of these young men were ‘damn good dawgs’)
RickyBobbyOnFire
March 15th, 2010
12:08 am
Good Night and bless you all. A great weekend for Georgia Tech. Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead an hour tonight. (UGA fans, your GT bosses won’t accept ignorance as your excuse for showing up an hour late for work tomorrow.) ‘dieu.
Set your clocks forward one hour.
March 15th, 2010
12:10 am
Do.
Set your clocks forward one hour.
March 15th, 2010
12:11 am
UGA fans, your GT bosses won’t accept ignorance as an excuse for your being an hour late tomorrow. SPRING FORWARD!
FullMetalJacket
March 15th, 2010
12:12 am
Good Night and God Bless everyone, even UGA fans. It was a great weekend for Georgia Tech.
BugKiller
March 15th, 2010
12:14 am
Uh-oh… Mark Fox and Mark Richt have righted the ships that are basketball and football in this state, returning the power and hope and right direction back where it belongs… in ATHENS… and we have petty little bugs, like the moron posting at 2237, coming out of the woodwork to tell us how bad things will be getting for us.
Kinda like how St. Simons spend 364 days throwing their little three point victory in our face.
Funny… I haven’t heard from that moron in about 5 months. Has anyone else seen him?
Poor wittle Buggies. Go back to cheering your Flag Boy while the grown-ups enjoy grown-up college sports.
Paul's Johnson
March 15th, 2010
12:20 am
What’s Coach K’s excuse this time for not making final 4?
A. There’s not any.
Smalls
March 15th, 2010
1:38 am
Tech is the terd in the punch-bowl of life…
Pluto
March 15th, 2010
6:33 am
Bye, Dawg Stephen. Miss ya!
Required Reading | Hard Knox Sports
March 15th, 2010
7:40 am
[...] AJC’s Final Four Fiasco. [AJC] [...]
DCDUKE FAN
March 15th, 2010
7:44 am
Mark,
It is dismissive articles like this–and their shocking regularity–that has earned you the “Duke loather” title that you so surprisingly mentioned in one of your blogs over the weekend.
So, Duke may lose to Louisville (who, it should be noted, may lose to Cal), but to suggest that Louisville will win because a Rick Pitino coached team (does it matter that he is again coaching a team from the state of Kentucky? Surely, it does!) ALMOST (horseshoes and handgrenades) beat a Coach K Duke team 18 YEARS AGO is absolutely absurd. Even an objective observer might suggest that that is a ridiculous stretch. You are better off just saying that you dont want to pick Duke because you dont really like Duke.
While Duke has its flaws, they also are 29-5, beat your beloved Tech twice, won the ACC regular season and tourney titles, and finished the season on a run that saw them lose only one game since the end of January and that was at Maryland on senior night. This is a very good Duke team.
What you havent caught onto all season long in your many predictions of Duke losing to Tech or, really, anyone else, is that this is a demonstrably different Duke team than previous editions for two big reasons. First, they rebound very well. No more come down court, jack up a three, and then hustle back to defend a breakout. Second, they have players like Singler and Smith who can get to the rim when they need a hoop. They still shoot a lot of threes, but when they need a basket they can get it. And third–a bonus reason–they play defense as well as any team in the country.
But these things cant possibly overcome the residual effects of a close game 18 years ago. Obviously.
Gatorguy
March 15th, 2010
7:50 am
Wasn’t going to do it, but with the smack talking butt-sniffers here,
(((((((((((((((((((((41-17))))))))))))))))
Mark Fox
March 15th, 2010
8:09 am
Hey anybody hear what seed we are and what region we are going to? My cell is out of minutes.
Realist
March 15th, 2010
8:17 am
Nice to see Mark Bradley is drinking the Big East Kool-Aid. Three teams in the Final Four? Well, good luck with that.
BR
March 15th, 2010
8:34 am
How can a team like Miss. St. 23-11, make it to the SEC Championship game, beat Florida to get there and not make the NCAA tournament over Florida???? Unbelievable…you can say RPI rating all you want but the fact that they went 2-1 against Florida this season, that should say it all. THEY GOT THE SHAFT….GO UK!!!!!
my wife has some bigguns
March 15th, 2010
8:51 am
Great story..My wife looks great too..Anyone want some pics of her? Email me at georgiagal1972@hotmail.com
inbreddawg
March 15th, 2010
9:07 am
Here’s the issue…. Tech is final four team with K or Roy Williams, or any decent coach at the helm. Favors is a lottery pick, as Lawal should be. Shumpert would be with a year of good guard coaching under his belt. Peacock will wind up in the NBA like so many other unheralded Tech players (Morrow, Bynum, West). There are other very good pieces on this team. Hewitt is such a horrible X and O, practice, and game day coach, that his teams always dramatically underachieve.
Ron
March 15th, 2010
9:25 am
Eddiedawg and Ozzy- You guys go enjoy womens gymnastics and swimming for a while
Jay
March 15th, 2010
9:36 am
Don’t mean to be picky…but all of you posting about after midnight about “moving your clocks forward”, you were already an hour behind all day Sunday. You were supposed to do that before you went to bed SATURDAY NIGHT! That is, IF you went to bed Saturday night! Again, didn’t mean to be picky, but I hate incorrect information being passed out.
Chris
March 15th, 2010
10:28 am
“The Bluedevils be oustedin”?????? like your work Mark, but doesn’t anyone every proofread articles?
1oc dizzy
March 15th, 2010
10:33 am
GT won’t make it past OSU. They ended up with a horrible draw.
mutt H8ter
March 15th, 2010
11:20 am
Calling a mutt fan a Dork is an upgrade for him.
Tech Rules
March 15th, 2010
11:26 am
These ga bulldog rednecks need to get back to their trailers and move them to another trailerpark before they get foreclosed.
Pell Smells
March 15th, 2010
11:28 am
Tebow the dumbest white quarterback in college football, it’s true he was half-man/half-mastodon, a throw-back for sure, probably starts his grill by banging rocks together, they renamed the test dumberlick after his results…..
Thomas
March 15th, 2010
11:37 am
Mark…you are going to look like a genius when Wofford does make the Sweet 16…..GO TERRIERS!!!!
OSCAR
March 15th, 2010
12:51 pm
135st or close
frank
March 15th, 2010
1:23 pm
mark why didnt you pick kentucky? I am surprised.
Not an NCAA fan
March 15th, 2010
1:27 pm
Mr. Bradley:
If you haven’t already moved on to your next blog, a question about scheduling:
Why would the geniuses at the NCAA/CBS who make up the day to day schedule have Wofford playing the same time as Clemson? Or 2 California teams? Or 3 ACC teams in the same time slot?
In each case, it would have been easy to flip games to avoid any conflict, but I guess that’s too much to ask of the overpaid executives who make the decisions.
Good luck to the programming director at the Atlanta CBS affiliate trying to decide what game to show in the early time slot Friday: West Virginia-Morgan State or Temple-Cornell. CBS did a fine job scheduling for its Southern audience, which will be deprived of 2 ACC games with Tech, FSU & Duke all playing at the same time that night.
Lots of variety for Atlanta TV viewers. Nothing but SEC teams Thursday and ACC teams in 3 of the 4 time slots Friday.
Racers? Really?
March 15th, 2010
1:37 pm
Murray St. over Vandy, huh? Guess you haven’t watched the Commodores play much this year. Vandy’s size, experience, and point guard play will outlast the Racers for sure…don’t sleep on Vandy. They’ve got all the components to make a deep run.
DW
March 15th, 2010
1:44 pm
Why all the GT/UGA sniping? Yikes, both are great schools. Both have many georgeous cheerleaders. Please, everybody, move on.
Full Disclosure before reading on: I am a Tech grad and cheer for them. I also cheer for UGA.
(1) Did anyone truly believe prior to the game that GT would beat Duke? Come on, tell the truth.
Did anyone truly believe that with five minutes left in the game, GT would win? Did anyone truly believe that with 30 seconds left GT would win. Of course not.
Duke was always going to win. They would get up by twenty and hold on. Or, they would get down by 20 and come back. Or, it would be back and forth all the way and they would sink a three at the buzzer to win. If GT was on the verge of winnng the refs would make some bizarre call and throw the game to Duke.
Duke always wins these games. If Duke cannot win on merit, the refs will do their magic. This is why Duke never goes very far in the Big Dance. The first game they don’t get the officiating, they’re toast.
(2) GT fans: If you were to swap coaches, Hewitt for Krzyzewski, is there any doubt about who would win. Of course, you’d have to allow a month or so of coaching. Long enough for Hewitt to completely screw up Duke and for Krzyzewski to organize GT’s talent.
(3) It’s hard to see how GT will ever be a major BBall power again. They are a one-and-done franchise. And even when they recruit future NBA players, Hewitt will make a mess of it.
DW
Boca Baby
March 15th, 2010
2:13 pm
OK enough already. The Mountain West gets four picks and the ACC gets six. This I do not understand. With all the underlings who really do not deserve to be there I am finally ready to expand the field to at least ninety-six. Then we can do away with all the bubble babble. The expansion will not affect anyone and all the underlings will be able to prove themselves against the teams that they bump out because of the silly “create-a-conference” tie-in nonsense. It will mean only one more game played by the bottom sixty-four. Then the brackets will be pure and devoid of politics.
dawgrific
March 15th, 2010
3:19 pm
tech fans really are an all-out embarrassment, talking smack when you can hardly EVER beat UGA in ANYTHING, not even basketball. plus, you all would have been crying for hewitt’s head if they had not lucked up and beat an AWFUL unc team on thursday, but now you are in, BARELY, and you pipe up again, classic examples of sports-rooting the moron way.
dawgrific
March 15th, 2010
3:21 pm
acc getting 6 is a joke this year, and poor MS ST loses twice to KY in OT and they get shafted while an incredibly average florida team gets in, that I don’t understand, especially when florida finished pretty weakly
dawgrific
March 15th, 2010
3:23 pm
sorry DW, you are not the type of fan I am referencing in my first post
Dick Vital
March 15th, 2010
3:46 pm
Way to go Babby GT is in the house.How bout them dogs Babby. i hear there programs are on the decline,To bad Babby.
R-Tech 10
March 15th, 2010
3:49 pm
Mark it down–Tech is going to the Sweet 16! They are on fire and Hewitt’s got them really motivated right now!
I LOVE IT HOW
March 15th, 2010
5:21 pm
i love it how uga fans come on a Tech blog and run their mouths, what a disgrace to this state. I hope they really do replace uga with a robot dawg, LOL i would laugh my a$$ off hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahaha
dawg 55
March 15th, 2010
10:24 pm
ozzy- you stink and you know that gt is going to be beat bad!