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It’s the most wonderful time of the year. OK, I know it’s not holiday season anymore, but if you’re a college basketball fan, then to you this is the equivalent of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or whatever you prefer. Of course what I’m talking about is the buildup to March Madness. These final few days of February leading into March are as exciting as it gets. The teams are battling for those final spots, or trying to gain momentum going into the conference tournaments.
Look at last weekend as an example. We’re not even in March yet, but we have quality games such as a monumental mid-major battle between ranked Butler and Davidson led by Stephen Curry; a high-powered North Carolina team against ACC rival Maryland; potential No. 1 team in the country Oklahoma led by Blake Griffin going up against Big 12 rival Texas. Sunday you have perennial Big East powers Villanova at Syracuse; a Big 10 matchup between top five team Michigan State and Wisconsin. Finally, there is a top ten matchup between ACC rivals Wake Forest and Duke. Hopefully you were able to find some time to do some work last weekend, sometime in between those games.
There’s no doubt college basketball is the most exhilarating sport to watch, and every year at this time, we get to witness the best of the best. I will save my predictions for when the brackets are revealed, but I can say with a strong amount of confidence that this year’s March will have more madness than years past, and here’s why: We don’t know who will win it. My pick since last year when I found out they were returning their top 5 scorers was North Carolina. I would still bet the house on them, but I would be sitting awfully close to that TV screen. The thing that worries me about UNC is still their defense, which was their Achilles heel last year, along with their slimming bench due to injuries (even though highly touted freshmen Tyler Zeller could return this week). The other teams in the upper tier are Oklahoma (benefitted from weak Big 12 and has struggled against talented teams), Pittsburgh (good team getting hot at the right time; hopefully their big men will be able to keep up with a run through March) and Connecticut (great inside-outside game and virtually unbeatable if seven-foot-three Hasheem Thabeet is on his game).
The teams that could get hot and make a run into late March are Wake Forest, Duke, Michigan State, Louisville and Memphis. Out of this group I like the way Louisville has been playing lately (beside the stinker they had against Notre Dame). They have a good balance of inside-outside, just like UNC and Oklahoma have. The one thing that could hurt them is their youth and previous inability to take down high-powered teams such as UNC, who knocked them out of the tournament last year.
Any way you look at it, this has the build up of being an exciting month and a half of basketball. So even if you forgot to roast the chestnuts by the fire, we are still in a college basketball wonderland.
Bangor Daily News