March MADNESS!!! Brackets are Out!

In case you hadn't early heard, the brackets are out. Here's the breakdown by region:

EAST REGION

1 - Ohio State
2 - North Carolina
3 - Syracuse
4 - Kentucky
5 - West Virginia
6 - Xavier
7 - Washington
8 - George Mason
9 - Villanova
10 - Georgia
11 - Marquette
12 - Alabama-Birmingham/Clemson (play-in game)
13 - Princeton
14 - Indiana St.
15 - Long Island
16 - Texas-San Antonio/Alabama St. (play-in game)


SOUTHWEST REGION

1 - Kansas
2 - Notre Dame
3 - Purdue
4 - Louisville
5 - Vanderbilt
6 - Georgetown
7 - Texas A&M
8 - UNLV
9 - Illinois
10 - Florida St.
11 - USC/Virginia Commonwealth (play-in game)
12 - Richmond
13 - Morehead St.
14 - St. Peter's College
15 - Akron
16 - Boston University

WEST REGION

1 - Duke
2 - San Diego St.
3 - Connecticut
4 - Texas
5 - Arizona
6 - Cincinnati
7 - Temple
8 - Michigan
9 - Tennessee
10 - Penn St.
11 - Missouri
12 - Memphis
13 - Oakland
14 - Bucknell
15 - Northern Colorado
16 - Hampton

SOUTHEAST REGION

1 - Pittsburgh
2 - Florida
3 - BYU
4 - Wisconsin
5 - Kansas St.
6 - St. Johns
7 - UCLA
8 - Butler
9 - Old Dominion
10 - Michigan St.
11 - Gonzaga
12 - Utah St.
13 - Belmont
14 - Wofford
15 - UC-Santa Barbara
16 - UNC-Asheville/Arkansas-Little Rock (play-in game)

NOTABLE SNUBS

As with every year, there were snubs in the selection process. Even expanding the tournament to 68 teams didn't seem to leave everyone happy. There's always going to be that last team that gets left out. This year there were a few teams that had cases to be upset:

Virginia Tech - Virginia Tech finished 5th in the ACC and won 21 games. Among those wins, they beat tournament teams Duke, Florida St. twice and Penn St.. They also made it to the ACC Tournament semifinals before losing to Duke.

Colorado - Colorado finished 6th in the Big 12 and also won 21 games. They beat Kansas St. 3 times, Texas and Missouri. They were knocked out of the Big 12 tournament in the semifinals by Kansas.

St. Mary's - St. Mary's won the regular season title in the West Coast Conference and won 25 games overall. They started out the season 17-2, but went just 8-6 down the stretch. They beat Gonzaga once in three tries and lost to them in the Championship Game of their conference tournament.

Some other notable snubs:

Harvard 23-6
Cleveland St. 26-8
Missouri St. 25-8
Colorado St. 19-12
Marshall 22-11
UTEP 25-9
Boston College 20-12
Oklahoma St. 19-13
Southern Miss 22-10
Wichita St. 24-8
UCF 19-11

The biggest point of contention was that the University of Alabama-Birmingham and Virginia Commonwealth got in over the three teams above. But what are you going to do? There were 37 at large bids this year. If you couldn't get yourself into the top 35 of those so you could avoid that bubble, at some point, that's on the programs. At the end of the day, you can only control what you do on the court, and each one of those three teams lost some games they shouldn't have lost.

That being said, I think Virginia Tech and Colorado should've both gotten in. As it stands now I need to fill out a bracket that doesn't have them in it. My soon to be mother in law is counting on me to be her ringer when she fills out hers for her work pool so I need to get a gameplan together.