Gators, Seminoles, Canes invited to The Show
Joe only picking Florida to advance to next week’s Sweet Sixteen round of tourney play.
Florida, Florida State and Miami were all given bids to the Men’s National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament last Sunday.
All three teams had periods of success this season and all three struggled at times.
None of the teams go into the tournament with any real momentum nor did they really do anything in their conference tournaments last week.
Their time in the show may be short-lived.
The Hurricanes are in the East bracket and will play Thursday at around 3 p.m., meeting a spunky Loyola of Chicago team on TruTV.
The Gators, a South bracket team, play later Thursday facing the winner of St. Bonaventure-UCLA, which will have met in a First Four Tuesday contest.
The Florida game is set for around 9 p.m., also on TruTV.
The Seminoles are bracketed in the West and don’t get into action until Friday when they face Missouri in a 9 p.m. TBS game.
Virginia, Villanova, Kansas and Xavier of Ohio are this year’s top seeds and rightfully so.
They’ve played the most consistent all year but all four teams have some weakness points and this could be a year all four number-one seeds miss the finals.
As for the winners of the first two rounds, I’ll pick to make the Sweet Sixteen:
South Region: Virginia, Arizona, Loyola of Chicago, Cincinnati.
West Region: Xavier, Gonzaga, Houston, North Carolina.
East Region: Villanova, West Virginia, Florida, Purdue.
Midwest Region: Kansas, Clemson, Michigan and Duke.
I don’t necessarily think these are the best sixteen teams in the field but I think the brackets may be viable for these teams to survive the first two rounds.
Reporter’s Warning: Do not use these opinions to fill in any bracket pool. I’ve got in some of those pools before and haven’t been very successful.
Next week we’ll look at the Sweet Sixteen bracket and try to decide who will be in the Final Four.
By Joe Ferolito
sports@prioritynews.net