NCAA Tournament 2019: Buy or Sell Syracuse, VCU, Ole Miss, and Utah State
By Cody Gerena
VCU Rams
The VCU Rams 25-7(16-2) are representing the East Regional as the 8-seed. After dominating the whole A-10 season to win their second-ever A-10 Regular Season Championship, they got rewarded with an early exit in the conference tournament to the Rhode Island Rams. To add insult to injury, their top-scorer Marcus Evans got hurt and had to leave the game early with an injury, but thankfully, it doesn’t seem like the injury was too serious as he seems like he’ll be able to play in their first-round matchup.
The Rams’ first-round matchup will be against UCF, who was ranked just last week. They may have two wins against ranked teams this month, but they are coming off against two straight losses to teams who failed to crack into the 64-team tournament, Temple and Memphis. A man that they have to watch out for is 7″6′ senior center, Tacko Fall, who leads the team in rebounds and is third in points per game.
The winner of this match will face the tournament favorites, the Duke Blue Devils. Duke has the two most popular players in college basketball today, Zion Willamson and RJ Barrett, both freshmen who will probably go in the top three of the NBA Draft. Duke also just won the ACC Tournament, so they’d be riding on a wave of momentum. Many people have Duke going far, with over 50% of all brackets from the ESPN Tournament Challenge having them go to the Final Four. No matter how good the 8-seed is, it’d be shocking to see the Blue Devils go out before the Sweet Sixteen.