I mentioned it on the other board, but I am satisfied with how the bracket is situated for us. We know that we have to win the tournament to get to the NCAAs, so I am looking at each round and how it plays out for us to get to the championship game. First point is that we are on the opposite side of the bracket as USA. This is important because they are clearly the best team in the tournament and we want to put off playing them for as long as possible. Second, we know we are going to have to play WKU, so why not play them in the quarters? That seems to me to give us a possible advantage of catching them when they haven't played a game in over a week and could possibly be rusty. Third, I'm not scared of UALR at all. We played them at their own place and lost by 2 and won 5 of the next 6 following that.

In my opinion, the bracket is set up to give us our best chance of reaching the championship game. Once you get there, anything can happen. Hopefully JJ will pull something else out of his sleeve the way he did after the UALR loss, after which the team played very well for 3 straight games.

I agree with this, but I do fear UALR a bit just becase of the home court advantage thing. We play poorly on the road (as we all already know) I think a neutral court is a bit better.

Regardless, WKU was clearly the better team on 2/7. Lets hope we can handle their pressure and shut down Lee. I will be glad to see that guy (and UNO's McCaleb) go.

At this point I'm not even worried about WKU. We are in for a battle on Wednesday I think.

CMJ wrote:
At this point I'm not even worried about WKU. We are in for a battle on Wednesday I think.

I think it could be a tough game too. But it's all the same if we lose at any point in the tournament, so I was just looking at the path it would take to win it all.

My pre-tournament pick is WKU. Even though USA has Home Court advantage, I have to go with the Toppers using the "hard to defeat a good team 3 times" principle.

If we can get by ASU and then pull and upset over WKU - watch out.

I think WKU is the best team from the Belt this year. I think if they meet USA again, they will win by a good margin.