1. Michigan State‘s commanding win against Memphis was sweet in East Lansing and Michigan‘s dominant victory against VCU was just as greate in Ann Arbor, but the two teams together gave the state of Michigan something it had never seen before. With two Sweet Sixteen berths, the Spartans and Wolverines have advanced to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament in the same year for the first time ever. The two teams split in head-to-head match-ups this year, with the Spartans routing the Wolverines in East Lansing before Michigan got payback in a close contest in Ann Arbor just a few weeks later. But this weekend at the Palace of Auburn Hills, the state was unified by both teams taking the floor in their home state and advancing to the next weekend of action.
2. With the game on the line Sunday afternoon, Ohio State and the Big Ten’s top scorer stood idly by as the team’s point guard handled the late-game duties to advance the Buckeyes to the Sweet Sixteen. It was Aaron Craft, not Deshaun Thomas, who was the focal point against upset-minded Iowa State in Dayton. Craft had an overall up-and-down afternoon, but it ended on a huge up when he drained a three-pointer with Georges Niang in his face to give the Buckeyes a 78-75 win. Craft has always been known for his defensive prowess, but his play over the last month or so has proven he can be a scorer to lead Ohio State to big things. 
   
3. Mighty No. 1 seed Indiana is just relieved to be moving on after a tough game against Temple. Yes, that’s right. The Owls were in it the whole way on Sunday, all the way up until the moment when Victor Oladipo hit a three-point dagger in the waning moments in Dayton. Bob Kravitz writes that it was not so much joy that overcame coach Tom Crean after the final buzzer sounded, but relief. The Hoosiers get Syracuse in Washington, DC, next, with a chance to advance to the Elite Eight on the line.
4. Let’s not forget that there are other Big Ten teams that are still playing, just outside the auspices of the Big Dance. Iowa has advanced to face Virginia in the NIT, another team that was hovering around the bubble at the end of the regular season. The Cavaliers have some pretty good wins to go along with some puzzling losses,  and will present a challenge for the Hakweyes when the two teams tangle on Wednesday in Charlottesville. As Scott Dochterman writes, the teams have plenty of similarities — a deep bench, a good defense, a solid home record — which should make for a tough contest.
5. It seems like there have been constant reminders since November that the Big Ten has been the best conference in the country, and the NCAA Tournament has been just the latest in a long line of them. Michigan and Michigan State are holding it down for the Mitten State, with fellow high seeds Indiana and Ohio State also taking care of business early. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though; overall, the Big Ten’s strong start to the NCAA Tournament is one of the best all-time.

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Tonight’s Lede. Florida Gulf Coast Does It Again. Outside of the weak frontrunner status placed upon Louisville after a dominant Big East Tournament run, there wasn’t a whole lot college basketball fans could agree on heading into the NCAA Tournament. Common ground could be found on one particular item: there were going to be upsets. Lots of them. The “no dominant team” theme is a tired headline, but it bears repeating on a night like this, when a No. 15 seed punched its ticket to the Sweet 16 for the first time in Tournament history. We’re down to 16 teams now, but even in a year when chalky, seed-predictable, docile bracket proceedings were far from the main expectation, I don’t think anybody saw this coming…

Your watercooler moment. A Story Everyone Can Get Behind: FCGU.

Nothing more strongly embodies the spirit of March Madness than high-seeded underdogs. Last season’s edition gave us Norfolk State and Lehigh – on the same day, no less – reveling in the national spotlight, 15-seed brothers-in-arms taking the college hoops world by storm. CJ McCollum was the best and most entertaining star nobody had heard of. Kyle O’Quinn was a wide-grinned big man with NBA aspirations. Fast track one year later, and this season’s captivating March underdog story is nothing like anything we’ve ever seen before. Florida Gulf Coast doesn’t have one leading protagonist (besides maybe its head coach, Andy Enfield, who – for reasons basketball-related and not – is something of a hero for every man not partial to Georgetown or San Diego State) or even a specific stylistic strength to explain its remarkable run into the second weekend. The best way to describe it is a cocky but measured confidence, a newfound flamboyance, a heightened sense of what it means to own the spotlight. And all of it comes together to produce the most thrilling on-court product of recent memory. There are dunks and heel-clicks and impossibly hilarious bird-imitating dances and, of course, dunk city. The Florida Gulf Coast Eagles have stolen the show and I don’t see them giving it back any time soon. Until they meet Florida in this week’s Sweet 16 showdown – and seriously, if they win that game, I give up – stories will be written, lives will be unearthed, and the nation will come to embrace college basketball’s most unlikely March heroes.

Sunday’s Quick Hits…

• As Expected, The Big Ten is Dominating. All season the Big Ten was drowned in plaudits and glowing recommendations for its upper-tier strength and top-to-bottom quality. The Big Ten was good, and everybody kind of agreed the league was miles ahead of the rest. Now the NCAA Tournament is confirming our suspicions: after Indiana and Ohio State moved past Temple and Iowa State, respectively, Sunday, the Big Ten is 10-3 in tourney competition and can lay claim to one-fourth of the Sweet 16 field. The Hoosiers, Buckeyes, Michigan State and Michigan hovered near the top of the polls all season, and were just as impressive when gauged on per-possession efficiency metrics (as of Sunday, none ranked lower than eighth in Ken Pomeroy’s metrics). To see that play out on the sport’s biggest stage is, for someone who analyzes the game year-round like me, and for fans who have feted their league’s dominance from Midnight madness to March madness, reassuring.
• The West is Kind of Insane. In a bracket littered with uncertainty and parity, the West region exists in its own province of unpredictability. Ohio State is the only team that has lived up to its seed thus far, and faces as wide-open a path to the Final Four as contender left in the field. The top half of the region will pit Wichita State and – following Sunday’s nail-biting win over Ole Miss – La Salle, who needs just two more wins to go from First Four to Final Four, VCU style, and bring even more wackiness to the field’s weirdest quartile. The Explorers haven’t gotten this far in the Tournament since 1955, but if their stable of talented guards – Ramon Galloway, Tyreek Duren and Tyrone Garland, who skied in the lane with 2.5 seconds left to ice the game with a deft right-handed finish – stay hot, the Final Four is well within their grasps.

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I. Renko is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report from Dayton after Sunday’s Third Round game between #1 Indiana and #9 Temple. Follow him on Twitter @IRenkoHoops.

Three Key Takeaways:

Victor Oladipo Did What NPOY Candidates Do…

1. Victor Oladipo Won This Game — The stat sheet won’t tell you what Victor Oladipo means to Indiana, because it offers no metrics, advanced or otherwise, for heart and soul. Oladipo took this game over down the stretch at both ends of the floor. Indiana had used a number of defenders to try to slow Khalif Wyatt (more on him later), but it was Oladipo’s shut-down, ball-denial, in-your-grill defense in the closing minutes that prevented Wyatt from carrying his team across the finish line. With the game tied at 52 and under two minutes to play, Oladipo harassed Wyatt into a missed three, grabbed the rebound, and drew a Wyatt foul while pushing the ball up the floor. On the next possession, Oladipo denied Wyatt the chance to even get the ball, forcing Temple to burn a timeout and the entire shot clock before Rahlir Hollis-Jefferson missed a jumper. Oladipo then promptly ran down to the other end of the floor and drained his one and only three-pointer of the game to clinch the win for Indiana.
2. Indiana Scored 58 Points — And Won — Indiana scores north of 1.15 points per possession, but they looked largely ineffective against Temple for two reasons. First, Temple’s tough interior defense. The best way to slow the Hoosiers is with physicality, and the Owls brought plenty today. They bodied Cody Zeller and Christian Watford in the post, swarmed Oladipo on his drives, and pushed the Hoosiers around on the glass. Zeller and Watford combined to shoot 6-of-17, Zeller committed six turnovers, and the Hoosiers rebounded less than 20 percent of their own misses. Second, the Hoosiers went cold from three-point range, missing eight of their first nine long-distance attempts. They got hot late just in time to push themselves over the top, but credit Temple for nearly stopping the nation’s most efficient offense in its tracks.
3. A One-Man Offensive Band — This game was an almost comical display of the extent to which Temple relies on Khalif Wyatt offensively. The confident point guard has a tendency to rise to the occasion against the best of competition, and today was no exception. Relishing the role of the villain, taking on not just the quiet and unassuming Oladipo but a boisterous crowd full of Hoosier fans, Wyatt did his best to carry the Owls to the upset. Despite being the obvious focal point of Indiana’s defense, he managed to pour in 31 points — 60 percent of Temple’s total — on 12-of-24 shooting.  The rest of the Owls’ offense was dreadful, shooting 9-of-38 from the floor. Scootie Randall was the worst offender with an atrocious 0-of-12 night, and the team as a whole missed several makeable shots.

Star of the Game: So maybe the stat sheet does tell you a bit about how good Oladipo is. He led Indiana with 16 points on 7-of-12 field goal shooting and added eight rebounds and an assist.

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Here are the game breakdowns for Sunday’s slate. From 24 to 16…

#2 Ohio State vs. #10 Iowa State – West Regional Third Round (Dayton, OH) – 12:15 PM ET on CBS

Deshaun Thomas and Aaron Craft will likely have to be their usual stellar selves to get past Iowa State. (Getty)

Friday night against Notre Dame, Iowa State hit nine threes as they rolled over Notre Dame into the Round of 32. Maybe just as impressively, they turned it over just six times, forced 17 turnovers and limited a good three-point shooting Irish team to just four threes on the night. Let’s just go out on a limb and say that none of those things are likely to happen when they face Ohio State today. But that’s not to insinuate that the Cyclones don’t have a chance. This is a team that can get scoring from all eight of the players in their rotation and guys like Will Clyburn, Melvin Ejim and Georges Niang are all inside/outside threats that are capable of creating matchup problems for their opponents. The problem is, the Buckeyes have shown their ability defensively to deal with versatile offensive teams; Michigan and Indiana are the top two offensive teams in the nation, and the Buckeyes have held each below one point per possession on one occasion earlier in the season. Of course, the thing is, on the other occasion when the Buckeyes faced those teams, they allowed an average of 1.21 points per possession and gave up a total of 21 three-pointers in those two games. In other words, while OSU has the ability to turn off the water for good offensive teams, there are just nights when good offense beats good defense. If Iowa State has it going, they’ve got enough talent to score enough points to beat Ohio State. The problem is, the Buckeyes have been pretty darn efficient offensively themselves of late and the Cyclones, meanwhile, are the third-worst defensive efficiency team remaining in the tournament. Iowa State’s offense has the ability to give Ohio State trouble, but it is just as likely that the Buckeyes will exploit that soft Cyclone defense.

The RTC Certified Pick: Ohio State

#1 Indiana vs. #9 Temple — East Region Third Round (at Dayton, OH) — 2:45 PM ET on CBS.

Fran Dunphy’s squad is known for defense, but lately the Owls have been putting up some major points. (Philly.com)

When you think of Fran Dunphy and Temple, you think of defense and a junkyard dog style of play. Not so much with this group. Since January 19, Temple has been an offensive juggernaut of sorts. The Owls have scored at least 70 points in their last 12 games and 16 of their last 17 games. Even in the one game they didn’t score 70, they fell only one point short of that mark. The point is the Owls can hang with Indiana offensively despite a talent disadvantage. The real question in this game is whether or not Temple can play the defense necessary to knock off the Hoosiers. Indiana is most vulnerable when teams slow the pace and get physical. Temple can surely get physical but we’re not sure the Owls can slow the pace against such a high-octane offense. For Indiana, the defensive key will be containing Khalif Wyatt. Although not a particularly great shooter, the Temple senior does it all. He gets others involved and averages 20.2 PPG with the potential to go for 30+ on any given night as he has done on six occasions this season, including in two of Temple’s last three games. Wyatt gets to the free throw line very well but one of Indiana’s many strengths is keeping opponents off the charity stripe. It’ll be very interesting to see if Wyatt can get to the line with regularity in this game. The Hoosiers have a significant talent advantage in this game but that was also the case with NC State, who Temple beat on Friday. Indiana can’t take this one for granted and must be focused defensively in the half court. Temple won’t turn the ball over often and Wyatt will be searching for contact all game.

The RTC Certified Pick: Indiana 

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Tonight’s Lede. Goodbye Opening Round 2013; Our Time Together was Brief but Unforgettable. The funny thing about Harvard’s improbable upset over New Mexico last night is the way by which most fans came to find out about it. Only a dedicated subsection of college hoops fandom was glued to their TV’s in the wee hours for the Crimson’s magical takedown. The rest were hit with the news upon waking up the following morning. “Woah, man, Harvard won? Really?” Something like that. Friday’s upset du jour took place in a prime viewing window, and the big boy on the losing end – well, let’s just say that program has been in this unfortunate position more than a few times over the past few seasons. Without divulging specifics, it is my gracious privilege to sum up another drama-filled day of Tournament action. And for my money, day two trumped day one by a wide margin.

Your watercooler moment. Down Goes Georgetown. Again. 

For the second straight day, we saw a huge upset. On Friday it was Florida Gulf Coast sinking Georgetown (Getty).

Once you move past the enormity of Florida Gulf Coast’s 2-15 shocker over Georgetown, the alley-oop dunks and And 1 Mixtape schadenfreude, a very alarming and very relevant recent trend comes into clear focus: Georgetown has seen its Tournament life go up in smoke at the hands of a double-digit seed in four consecutive seasons. You probably remember most of the losses: In 2010, 14-seed Ohio felled JTIII’s three-seeded Hoyas; VCU dropped G-Town as an 11-seed in 2011; and last season, red-hot 11-seed NC State pulled out a three-point win in the third round. None of those losses come close to FGCU’s 10-point win – the Eagles punked Georgetown in a year where the Hoyas, after a rugged Big East season, had every reason to believe their stifling defense and national player of the year candidate, Otto Porter, could push them towards a Final Four berth. Instead, FGCU got out on the break, flourished in transition and contained Porter and co. on the other end. The Eagles staged a massive upset against one of the most upset-proof teams – stylistically, not historically – in the entire bracket, with the defensive chops to weather the sort of up-and-down game FGCU thrives on. Here’s the best part: this little Atlantic Sun upstart took its spot on the big stage and totally owned it. The Eagles had Twitter ablaze with a litany of highlight reel dunks, and an equal accompaniment of bombast to turn the whole thing into what looked like a bunch of running up and down and just plain enjoying themselves on the court against a trendy Final Four pick. It was easily the most entertaining moment we’ve seen in this Tournament so far.

Also worth chatting about.Newsflash: NC State was overrated from the start.

The Wolfpack’s performance on the court never reached their national preseason valuation (Getty).

A few NCAA Tournament wins and a shiny recruiting class can do a few things for a team’s preseason perception. For NC State, it gave the nation – and not just fans, but the ACC preseason media and coaches pollsters – license to elevate the Wolfpack to a No. 6 ranking and a level of expectations unseen in Raleigh for more than two decades. Everybody loved NC State, or at least the idea of NC State using last season’s Tournament success along with an infusion of freshman talent to rip through ACC competition and become a mainstay in the top of the national polls. Those were unreasonably high projections to begin with; I knew it, you knew it and the Wolfpack’s nonconference and ACC opponents who saw them as nothing more than a talented but fundamentally disjointed outfit knew it. Now we can finally put this season to rest. The 2012-13 Wolfpack were nice to look at for a while, but their luster wore off as the season rolled along, and on Friday Temple crunched Mark Gottfried’s team in their opening-round 8-9 game, putting yet another dent in NC State’s supremely talented roster – which, more than anything else, was always about defense. Now this book is closed, and we can go back to never, ever overrating teams in the preseason based off last year’s Tournament performance. Hey, a man can dream, right?

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I. Renko is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report after the Round of 64 NCAA Tournament game between #1 Indiana and #16 James Madison. You can follow him on Twitter at @IRenkoHoops.

Three Key Takeaways:

1. In Case You Were Wondering, Indiana Can Score — The best offense in the country unleashed its full arsenal this afternoon, bombarding James Madison with drives, post feeds, threes, and pull-up jumpers. Getting to play their first non-Big Ten defense in 20 games seemed to release a pressure valve for the Hoosiers, and the scoring came pouring forth. The rub is that their defense remains a step behind their offense, and teams that are physical, slow the game down, and pound the glass pose a threat. Temple may not be able to pull off the upset, but looking down the line, a potential Sweet 16 matchup with Syracuse is a real concern for the Hoosiers.
   

   Yogi Ferrell celebrates after making a three-point basket against the James Madison Dukes. (Getty)

2. IU’s Size Advantage Paid Off — The Dukes have big strong guards, but in part due to injuries, they are sorely lacking in size inside. They paid for it against IU, getting outscored 36-20 in the paint and 16-2 at the free throw line. The Hoosiers had lots of offensive tools that they deployed in this game, but a feed to Zeller in the post almost always resulted in a bucket or free throws. And at the other end, the Dukes, who normally make 65 percent of their shots at the rim, managed to shoot just 33 percent in the first half on layups. Struggling to gain traction inside, they turned into a pure jump-shooting team, taking only three shots at the rim in the second half. The Dukes’ leading scorer, 6’6″ power forward Rayshawn Goins, was particularly ineffective, scoring only two points on 1-of-6 shooting.
3. Will Sheehey Was On His Game — Will Sheehey, the Big Ten’s Sixth Man of the Year, is a key X-factor for Indiana. The Hoosiers’ offense is that much more complete when Sheehey is on his game. He’s been prone to disappearing lately, scoring just two points in three of IU’s last seven games, and seeing his scoring average dip into single digits. But today, he came off the bench to score 15 points on 7-of-15 shooting. If he can repeat this kind of performance against tougher opponents, IU could be Dancing all the way to Atlanta.

Star of the Game: Freshman point guard Yogi Ferrell is the oft-forgotten man in IU’s formidable starting five, but he made a grand debut on the NCAA Tournament stage, scoring 14 of IU’s first 18 points and assisting on the other four by feeding Zeller for dunks. Ferrell’s one-man onslaught gave the Hoosiers an early, impregnable lead. He finished with 16 points, 8 rebounds, and 6 assists. With all four of his starting mates likely to leave IU, the former McDonald’s All-American and top 25 recruit will be Indiana’s focal point and leader in the coming years.

Quotable: Indiana coach Tom Crean on the worry that bruising Big Ten season would wear Indiana down too much:  “That goes through your head. I’d be lying to say it didn’t.”

Sights & Sounds: The NCAA allows teams a very specific number of bench seats, so Indiana was forced to put a half dozen of its players — including two scholarship athletes — in the stands behind the scorers’ table. The biggest victim of this unusual situation was the petite IU fan, decked out in a Hoosiers jersey, who got stuck sitting behind seven-foot freshman center Peter Jurkin and spent the game trying to crane her neck around him.

Wildcard: Although the Hoosiers have been the second-best three-point shooting team in the nation over the course of the season, they’ve hit just 33 percent of their attempts over the last six games, during which they’ve gone 3-3. This afternoon, they shot 9-of-22 from behind the arc.

What’s Next? Indiana will return to Dayton Arena on Sunday to face Temple, looking for the 22nd Sweet Sixteen appearance in school history.

After starting the season 18-1, Syracuse looked to be poised for another run at a Big East title and a top seed in March. However, the Orange struggled down the stretch of the regular season, losing seven of their last 12 contests in Big East play. With their hot early start and a few big wins — including one at then top-ranked Louisville — the NCAA Tournament was never really in question, but their seeding looked to be in real jeopardy as the losses piled up. Jim Boeheim was able to right the ship in his last Big East Tournament, and with wins over Seton Hall, Pittsburgh, and Georgetown before a tough championship game loss to Louisville, Syracuse seems to have regained a lot of momentum heading into the Big Dance.

Has Syracuse Regained Its Midseason Momentum; Or Is This a Mirage?

Region: East
Seed: No. 4
Record: 26-9 (11-7 Big East)
Matchup: vs. Montana in San Jose

Key Player: Michael Carter-Williams is Syracuse’s most talented player, and C.J. Fair is certainly the most consistent player on the squad, but no individual may be more important to Syracuse’s Final Four aspirations than senior forward James Southerland. Southerland put on a clinic from long range in the Garden last week, hitting 19 of his 33 three-point attempts in Syracuse’s four games. When he is on, he’s as good a shooter as there is in the country, and his mere presence really spreads the floor for the Orange, opening things up for Carter-Williams to penetrate opposing defenses and Fair to get good looks on his dangerous mid-range jumpers.

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With the NCAA Tournament officially underway as of last night’s game between North Carolina A&T and Liberty — although, let’s be honest, things don’t really begin to heat up until Thursday afternoon — we are unveiling the Official RTC Bracket today. Up first are the South and East Regions with the Midwest and West Regions to follow later this afternoon. Prior to revealing the picks, some quick analysis, and four questions to our bracket experts, here’s our methodology.

The inspiration behind the bracket largely comes from our weekly Blogpoll where a number of ballots from key contributors are combined to form a single Top 25. Rather than have eight people put their heads together and collectively fill out the bracket, we asked each to select their own bracket. Afterward, those selections were tallied up and the team with the majority vote in each slot is the one picked to advance below. As an example, you will notice that in the #8 vs. #9 game in the South Region, North Carolina was picked to advance in seven of eight brackets — hence the 88% tally next to the Tar Heels’ name. Deeper into the bracket, you may wonder how it’s possible for Kansas to advance past Michigan in the Sweet Sixteen with just 50% of the brackets choosing the Jayhawks, but that’s because three brackets had Michigan and one bracket had VCU, thereby giving Kansas the edge.

Here’s the first half of the 2013 Official RTC Bracket:

Quick Hitters From the South Region

• Advancing to Atlanta: #3 Florida
• Round of 64 Upset: #11 Minnesota over #6 UCLA
• Later Round Upsets: #3 Florida over #2 Georgetown in the Sweet Sixteen and #3 Florida over #1 Kansas in the Elite Eight
• Three Most Disputed Games: #11 Minnesota over #6 UCLA, #4 Michigan over #5 VCU, #1 Kansas over #4 Michigan

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The Madness is just around the corner and through nearly 48 hours post-reveal of the bracket, there’s been no shortage of number-crunching, analysis, and commentary about what is going to happen over the next three weeks. Betting markets are often a good benchmark indicator in terms of the overall public perception of the quality of teams, so every year we always like to make it a point to review what Las Vegas thinks about each region — each region’s odds have been normalized to 100% to show a truer snapshot of each team’s odds. This year, we’ve also added another couple of columns showing what the advance metrics of KenPom and HSAC have to say — there are some notable differences among some of these teams, so that’s certainly worth tracking as well.  (note: all Vegas odds were derived on Tuesday afternoon from The Greek.)

We’ll provide each region’s snapshot view below, followed by some light commentary, starting with the East Region…

No surprise that Tom Crean’s top-seeded Hoosiers are the favorite here, with #2 Miami (FL) and #4 Syracuse to follow. #3 Marquette is not a Vegas favorite, but they’re clearly valued more highly by the advanced metrics of HSAC and KenPom. By the same token, #6 Butler, with its recent Final Four history in tow, is given a much better chance among the oddsmakers than the metrics guys. With a separation between the top seven teams and the rest of the field, the East Region feels a bit more open in the middle, but don’t forget that #1 Indiana is the biggest favorite in both Vegas and KenPom of any of the four regions.

The South Region has six teams breaking the five percent threshold in Vegas, but all three views show really only four teams in this race. The advanced metrics folks really like #3 Florida, which makes sense as they’ve been very high in efficiency statistics all season. Vegas agrees, but not quite as much, giving the Gators a slightly-better-than-quarter chance of winning this region, while #1 Kansas, #2 Georgetown and #4 Michigan are all relatively good picks as well. Public perception of #8 North Carolina is quite a bit higher than what the metrics suggest, but that’s really the only other team where such a disparity exists.

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Throughout Monday, we will roll out our region-by-region analysis on the following schedule: East (9 AM), Midwest (11 AM), South (1 PM), West (3 PM). Here, Brian Otskey (@botskey) breaks down the East Region from top to bottom. Also, be sure to follow our RTC East Region handle on Twitter for continuous updates the next two weeks (@RTCeastregion).

You can also check out our RTC Podblast with Brian breaking down the East Region, which will drop both on the site and on iTunes Tuesday.

East Region

Favorite: #1 Indiana (27-6, 14-5 Big Ten). Ranked No. 1 in 10 of the 19 AP Top 25 polls this season (through last week), Indiana is the strong favorite in this region. The Hoosiers won the Big Ten regular season title but fell to Wisconsin in the conference tournament semifinals this past Saturday. Indiana fans are definitely bummed that their team won’t be playing in the Indianapolis regional but they will still show up. IU fans travel as well as any school in the country.

Cody Zeller and the Hoosiers earned the top seed in the East region (Photo: Andy Lyons)

Should They Falter: #2 Miami (27-6, 18-3 ACC). It has been a dream season in Coral Gables as Miami won both the ACC regular season and tournament titles. History, however, is against this team. Miami has made only one Sweet Sixteen appearance (1999-2000) in program history, representing the furthest this program has ever ventured into March. Also, nobody on the roster has ever played in an NCAA Tournament game. There are positives, though. Head coach Jim Larranaga obviously had a memorable run with George Mason in 2006 and most of Miami’s major contributors are older, veteran players. It’s much easier to win when you’re coaching 22- and 23-year olds rather than 18- and 19-year olds.

Grossly Overseeded: #4 Syracuse (26-9, 14-8 Big East). Despite advancing to the Big East championship game and playing better than Louisville for 24 minutes in that game, Syracuse’s overall profile looks more like a #5 or #6 seed rather than a #4. The Orange were just 5-5 in true road games, under .500 against the RPI top 50 and only 12-9 against the top 100. Before the Big East Tournament run, Syracuse had lost seven of its last 12 regular season games. There’s no doubt the week at Madison Square Garden helped Jim Boeheim’s team (as it historically has), but Syracuse is still too high for my liking.

Grossly Underseeded: #14 Davidson (26-7, 20-1 Southern Conference). Stephen Curry put Davidson on the map with a magical run to the 2008 Elite Eight, the only NCAA Tournament victories for the Wildcats since 1969. This year’s edition is pretty good in its own right. Coached by Bob McKillop, who has now made a respectable seven NCAA Tournament appearances in his 24 years at the small school near Charlotte, North Carolina, the Wildcats won 26 games and lost only once in conference play. Davidson challenged itself in the non-conference, playing the #20-rated schedule that included games against Gonzaga, Duke and New Mexico. Davidson has just two top 100 wins but we figured a 26-win team that scheduled up would have been rewarded with something other than a #14 seed. Ken Pomeroy’s rating projects only a four-point loss to Marquette so it’s clear that the Wildcats are capable of winning a game.

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