NCAA Basketball: Maryland and Arizona headlines Sunday Mailbag
By Bryan Mauro
Weakest conference going into the tournament? What conference will have the most teams eliminated in the first weekend? Who is the strongest conference heading into the tournament? Who is my final four? – Patrick (@patric650)
There was a lot to unpack with Patrick’s question and I will start by saying the weakest conference heading into the NCAA tournament is the SWAC. The SWAC is made of most of the HBCU’s in the NCAA and they have to go and play buy games in order to have a budget to operate. The winner of the league tournament is going to be the team ranked 68 in the field.
That is provided that no teams with a losing record from other conferences make the field. The SWAC tournament is still going to be fun basketball but the conference doesn’t match up very well with anyone else in the NCAA this year.
There are a few conferences that will not show well in the NCAA tournament but one that has been inflated all year. The Big Ten has a lot of teams who are all smoke and mirrors and have a lot of vulnerable teams come to the NCAA tournament. The league did not perform very well last year either. This year though the league has a lot of teams who are going to be ranked highly like Purdue and Illinois.
Purdue is a team that can win the national title but doesn’t play much defense at all, and if they get into a shootout with the wrong team they won’t last very long. Michigan State is playing some of the worst basketball in the country right now. Illinois has a ton of talent and a ton of pros, but for whatever reason, it seems as if they have some chemistry issues and they drop games they shouldn’t. Ohio State has been overrated all season long and is extremely vulnerable to a first-round exit again.
Wisconsin won the Big Ten and has the potential player of the year and a lot of role players. The Badgers do play great team ball and are the team I am likely going to have to go the furthest in March. The League isn’t going to have a one seed this year which is also weird for the Big Ten. Now that I wrote this they will likely all make the Sweet 16.
The Big 12 is loaded from the top to the bottom. At one point in the year, it looked as if every team was good enough to make the tournament, even though all would not get in as Oklahoma State is banned from postseason play this year. Texas Tech, Texas, Kansas, Baylor, TCU, and Iowa State are all going to get into the tournament and all of them have great wins and all have been ranked at one point this season.
Baylor, Kansas, and Texas Tech could all win the national title. Texas was the preseason pick by mostly everyone to make the final four and TCU and Iowa State came out of nowhere. The Big 12 was the best league all year and they are still the best league heading into the tournament.
I don’t know who I have as the final four yet as the bracket has not been released and I am a big believer in matchups and how well the rest of the teams in the bracket are playing. I feel bad for not providing an answer to this question but I can not provide one yet as I have not seen the bracket. I will provide one at one point before the tournament. Don’t get discouraged if your bracket gets busted early as this is the year where unpredictability will be the theme.