Final Four Open Thread + Picking The Lines

The NCAA Tournament is always an exercise in randomness. There are always a bunch of weird upsets. That said, there are some years where it's crazier than others. Last year, the Tournament pretty much held to form. Yes, the Final Four was a 1 seed, a pair of 2 seeds and a 4 seed, but it was all pretty predictable if you broke down the match-ups and used the computers. I nailed all four. But this season? It's been mildly insane. There's no way anybody could have reasonably come to the conclusion that Wichita State was going to make the Final Four, that Marquette was going to make the Elite 8, that Florida Gulf Coast or Oregon were going to make the Sweet 16.

It's not just that we've had some fluke final minute results - we always have buzzer beaters - but some teams are just playing at a different level than they did the rest of the season. While Oregon and Florida Gulf Coast were totally shocking Sweet 16 teams, neither team really had a "lucky" win. Both teams just played really, really well and earned those wins. They happened to play their two best games of the entire season at the perfect time. And the same goes for Wichita State, by the way. They're playing awesome right now. We knew there were a very strong 9 seed, but we had no idea that this was possible.

Despite busting my bracket, I do enjoy these types of NCAA Tournaments. There's nothing more lame than a Tournament with all four #1 seeds in the Final Four. I just don't appreciate the media overreaction. People thinking Andy Enfield is a stronger hire than Steve Alford are the perfect example. When I pointed out on twitter that Alford was the better hire, I was swamped by people telling me some version of "Enfield has only coached for 2 seasons and already has as many Sweet 16s!". Judging any coach on NCAA Tournament success is nonsense. The Tournament is an exercise in randomness. Alford has built up New Mexico to win at least a share of four Mountain West regular season titles. Enfield hasn't even won an Atlantic Sun regular season title yet. To say Enfield is "as accomplished" because two games mean as much as the 18 full NCAA seasons that Alford has coached is nonsense. Criticizing Alford's morals for the rape case at Iowa is a legitimate argument, and him going with a variant of the Nuremberg Defense at his opening press conference was disheartening, but on pure performance metrics he's a much more proven and accomplished coach than Andy Enfield. Enfield could end up a good head coach, but graveyards are littered with guys who had one good NCAA Tournament run at a mid-major, got promoted too quickly, and failed spectacularly at the next level.

Anyway, I'll talk more about this in my Pac-12 preview, which should be posted within the next week or so (my complete conference previews are being written and posted here). So let's get to the Final Four games:


Elite 8 ATS: 2-2-0
Total through Saturday: 34-29-1
2012 Tournament ATS: 30-35-2
2011 Tournament ATS: 40-26-1
2010 Tournament ATS: 35-25-3

Wichita State (+10) over Louisville: Honestly, I'm surprised by this spread, which is actually 10.5 at some books. I know that the computers say Louisville should be a 9-10 point favorite, and they'll probably have more fans than any other team at the Final Four (although you have to figure that the Michigan/Syracuse fans will be rooting for Wichita State), but this line ignores two things. First, have they noticed how good Wichita state has been playing lately? Second, have they forgotten that Kevin Ware won't be playing?

Let me expand on that for a moment. Louisville is playing great, but they were playing pretty great all season long. Despite the idiot pollsters who dropped them way down in the Top 25 for a while, they never really dropped below #3 in Pomeroy or the Sagarin PREDICTOR. Wichita State, on the other hand, has just been at another level since Ron Baker came back (and don't forget that Carl Hall missed a bunch of time in the middle of the season as well). Wichita State had a tougher path to the Final Four than Louisville did, and they've arguably been playing nearly as well. As for the Kevin Ware injury, the media is looking at it from the offensive angle (because the media looks at everything from the offensive angle), but they're really going to miss him on defense. Peyton Siva and Russ Smith are going to have to play a ton of minutes... can Louisville press like they usually do or will Rick Pitino pull them back a little bit? Even if he doesn't, will it be as effective? The one real match-up weakness that Wichita State has is ball handling, where they were only 6th in the Missouri Valley in offensive turnover rate, but if Louisville can't fully exploit this then they could legitimately lose this game.
 
Michigan (-2) over Syracuse: This is actually a little bit of a large spread. Michigan should be more like a 1 point favorite, or this game even could be a pick'em. But with a spread this small, you've got to just pick the team you think is going to win, and I think that's Michigan. Here's the thing: picking the spread in games involving Syracuse is easy as pie. Can teams hit threes well or do they depend on getting to the basket? Can they take care of the ball and prevent Syracuse from getting transition offense? Can they dominate the glass on both ends of the floor? The closer you are to saying "yes" for all three of those, the less likely Syracuse is going to be able to win.

As for Michigan, they lead the nation in offensive turnover rate. They easily handled #havoc, so they're going to take care of the ball against Syracuse. And while Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway will be good enough to penetrate the zone (unlike guys like Jordan Hulls), Michigan also has multiple players who can knock down threes. Nik Stauskas showed against Florida what he can do, and don't sleep on Spike Albrecht's ability to come off the bench and hit a three. Rebounding is a bigger concern, since Michigan was only an average rebounding team in the Big Ten, but Mitch McGary has been a rebounding monster in the NCAA Tournament. I think Michigan will be okay there. So how can Michigan lose this game? If McGary gets shut down like he did in the first half of the Kansas game by the long, athletic Syracuse post defense. Burke and Hardaway might become passive and Michigan will just shoot a crap ton of threes. Syracuse's zone defense, like all zone defenses, will allow a lot of open threes... but that's still a roll of the dice. Michigan was white hot against Florida, but they could go cold here like Marquette and Indiana did against Syracuse. That's the path to a Syracuse victory. But in my opinion, McGary will at least be able to hold his own, and either Burke or Hardaway will be effective attacking the zone off the dribble, and Michigan will win.