Henry Marken
Hey, it’s me again. Just checking in. This is your last chance to shine your shoes and iron your shirts, because the big dance begins in a few hours!
This is also your last chance to roll the dice, pick some upsets and get on the bold, yet correct side of history… before Michigan loses in the second round and turns your beautiful bracket into a soup kitchen. Like Dirty Mike and the Boys finding a red Prius kind of soup kitchen.
Can you hear in my voice how much I dislike Michigan?
Once again, my brain can only comprehend half of the bracket, as the madness of the tournament’s entirety will turn my brain into a warm puddle, thus I will only discuss the content of the LEFT side of the bracket.
Okay, so my predictions are off to a freezing cold start as my dark horse team, Michigan State, blew a healthy lead with minimal time left and lost to UCLA in the play-in game. Technically the tournament hasn’t even started yet and that game didn’t hurt me at all, as I can still change all of my picks around… but at the same time, the tournament hasn’t even started yet and I have already been hilariously wronged.
Great.
Not a good sign as the real deal kicks off in a couple hours, where all picks will be locked and sealed. I still think that expecting a lot of upsets is the correct approach and if you find that your sweet 16 is full of a lot of 1s, 2s, 3s, and 4s… you should definitely mix it up. Considering that Drake almost lost on a celebration and time management play, you should expect the unexpected. There’s gonna be some painful collapses, many of which might occur under 10 seconds… which is just like if you were to get in a bike accident and a stranger came running up to you, not to help you, but to spit on you and all of your open wounds.
God, this weekend is going to be so painful.
With this in mind, there are a couple teams on the left side that I would like to quickly double down on. As I’ve stated multiple times before, congrats to Michigan on a great season, but I just don’t buy them right now. I think the combination of them being wounded as well as having an absolute gauntlet for a region makes this bracket WIDE OPEN.
My favorite team in their region, and perhaps in all of March Madness, is Texas. They are an outstanding team with a defense that cripples opposing offenses, as well as the shooting capacity and firepower to blow teams away. I think the toughest competition in their region isn’t Michigan or Alabama… it’s Connecticut. Look out for UConn; they are sneaky good. They are incredibly talented both offensively and defensively, and there’s a hot chance that they can give all the teams in their region, including Texas, a hellish tournament experience. I’m gonna say this right now so you heard it here first… putting UConn in your final four might be the most profitable decision you’ve ever made.
There, I said it.
My opinions still stand about the teams I hate. Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, and even Alabama… I just think that these teams will let you down. Well, that’s all I got for the left side of the bracket. Hopefully there’s enough ballsy content on here that the memory of my accurate predictions will outweigh the ones that were comically wrong.
Or maybe all of my calls are catshit and I should just go back to writing about college kids and their spirit animals when March is over.
I guess we will find out soon enough.
Happy March!
