West Bracket Breakdown

#3 Seed Or Lower Favorite: West Virginia. Honestly, I'm not very confident in any of the teams outside of the top two here. I think this is the weakest bracket, by far. Obviously West Virginia has a very tough route, getting Arizona in the first round and Duke in the second round. If I were you, I wouldn't pick them into the Final Four... or even in the Sweet Sixteen. But if I had to pick a route-neutral best team other than UCLA or Duke, I'm going with a vastly under-rated West Virginia team. My main argument, the Sagarin PREDICTOR: UCLA 3rd, Duke 4th, West Virginia 8th, UConn 24th, Drake 28th.

Most Likely Double-Digit Seed To Win A Game: Baylor. Read my reasons here.

Most Likely #6+ Seed To Get To Sweet Sixteen: West Virgina. For all the reasons listed above. Once again, however, I wouldn't stray from the top five seeds when picking a Sweet Sixteen out of this bracket.

Last Word: There are three interesting cases here, and I'll go in reverse seeding order. First, Drake, a team that is such a solid team in every facet of the game. And the way that they always seem to go on a quick 12-2 scoring spurt in every game reminds me of some of the great teams of the past. But as I've been going through the numbers this week, they keep popping up as a team that is over-rated (poor Sagarin PREDICTOR, mediocre road record, etc). Intuitively, they're under-seeded and should play well. The numbers disagree. So I'll learn here whether I should trust my intuition or not. Another interesting case is Duke, a team that I've talked about several times before. Can they keep that hot three-point shooting going? If the threes aren't falling, they won't even beat West Virgina. But if they're falling, they can beat anybody. Finally, what can UCLA do with what the Selection Committee gave them? In my mind, they are the most likely #1 seed to make the Final Four, because they simply have the easiest route. I see them as solid favorites over everybody else in their bracket.

Remember when making your bracket that you can't just pick the team you view as the best to win the Tournament. You have to be wary of picking teams to go far that might lose earlier. So even if you don't think UCLA is the best overall team in the country, you absolutely have to keep in consideration that they have the easiest route to the Final Four of any team in the bracket. If you pick them to win the title, you're unlikely to have your bracket busted in the first two weekends.