Well, the bandwagon trip was short... Thanks to Michigan

That's right. As quickly as I jumped on the Northwestern bandwagon, I have to get back off of it. It not necessarily due to me not liking the Wildcats’ chances on getting in, but more so due to both Michigan winning yesterday at Minnesota and Illinois State knocking off Creighton in the MVC semifinals. I substituted Michigan with the good road win instead of Northwestern, and Northwestern’s chances of staying in my bracket were hurt by the fact that Illinois State might have ensured that the Missouri Valley Conference will get two bids to the NCAA tournament. I’m still thinking that Creighton is in, but they don’t need any other of the mid-major powerhouses (Butler, Gonzaga, Memphis, possibly Davidson and possibly Siena) to lose in their respective conference tournaments. If any of those teams do not get the at-large bid from their conference, Creighton (and Providence for that matter), along with all the other bubble teams’ chances are not going to be looking pretty.

I did make some changes in my bracket, but I’m really torn as to who deserves the fourth seeds in my bracket. It seems as though all of my 4 and 5 seeds either lost or just made it into the conversation of these seeds. So, I decided to keep LSU in as a four seed, even though they lost yesterday. This might change if they have an early exit in the weak SEC tournament.

I’ve also been watching some of the mid-major conference tournaments, and I really enjoyed watching the VMI/Radford matchup for the Big West Championship game. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two conflicting styles of play in a competitive D-1 basketball game. I was silently rooting for VMI, because I thought that the leading scoring team in the NCAAs for the past three years would have been a scary team in the Big Dance. However, they didn’t have a big guy to match up against Radford’s 6’ 11” center. Radford prevailed and they are goin’ dancin’. Other teams that received an automatic bid are: East Tennessee State (Atlantic Sun), Morehead State (Ohio Valley Conference) and Cornell (Ivy). They are in bold in my bracket.

Here’s the bracket before Sunday’s games begin: