NCAA Tourney Picks

The first round of the NCAA tournament begins today. I am a big college basketball fan, so I thought I might share my picks with you:

First Round Upsets

• Midwest Region: N. Iowa over UNLV; San Diego State over Tennessee (sorry to all the UT fans out there!)
• West Region: Murray State over Vandy; Florida over BYU
• East Region: Cornell over Temple; Washington over Marquette; Missouri over Clemson
• South Region: Utah State over Texas A&M; Siena over Purdue; Old Dominion over Notre Dame

Sweet 16

• Midwest: Kansas, Maryland, Georgetown, Ohio State
• West: Syracuse, Butler, Pittsburgh, Kansas State
• East: Kentucky, Wisconsin, New Mexico, WVU
• South: Duke, Siena, Baylor, Richmond

Elite 8

• Kansas, Ohio State, Syracuse, K-State, Kentucky, WVU, Duke, and Baylor

Final Four

• Kansas, Kansas State, Kentucky, and Baylor

Championship

• Kentucky over Kansas

A few notes

• I like to call some upsets in the first round, but mostly go with "chalk" after that (only 1, 2, and 3 seeds in the Elite 8 and beyond)
  
• The biggest exception this year would be Richmond going to the Sweet Sixteen (gotta pull for the alma mater) as well as Siena, and then Baylor making it to the Final Four
• I'm not really all that confident in Kentucky's ability to win it all. They are so young and didn't play an extremely difficult schedule, but I just couldn't pick against them

I hope your March Madness experience is as fun as mine will be. I just love this time of year - the weather is getting warmer, the days are getting longer, college basketball is ruling the sports world, and Easter is just around the corner!