2010 WEST REGION PREDICTIONS
The predictions below are my own personal analysis and no particular degree of confidence should be placed in any of them. I highly recommend using my friends at Team Rankings' Bracket Brains product instead--those guys are the real experts.
WEST REGION - Salt Lake City, UT
1 Syracuse
16 Vermont
8 Gonzaga
9 Florida State
Syracuse
Florida State
5 Butler
12 UTEP
4 Vanderbilt
13 Murray State
UTEP
Murray State
3 Pittsburgh
14 Oakland
6 Xavier
11 Minnesota
Pittsburgh
Xavier
7 BYU
10 Florida
2 Kansas State
15 North Texas
BYU
Kansas State
Syracuse
UTEP
Xavier
Kansas State
Syracuse
Kansas State
Regional Champ
Kansas State
Kansas State
GENERAL THOUGHTS ON THE WEST REGION
- SLEEPER ALERT: Watch out for both Xavier and BYU. I've liked the Musketeers for quite awhile this season & this is not their first rodeo, so to speak. Pitt may be a bit over-seeded at the 3, and the X-Men should match up pretty well. Meanwhile, if BYU gets past Kansas State in the 2nd round, they draw into Salt Lake City, where they'll have plenty of fans. And they couldn't have asked for a better #1 seed than Syracuse, which employs a legendary 2-3 zone that Cougar sharpshooters can utterly pick apart.
- I'm not really too high on either favored seed in the San Jose pod. For one thing that is going to be a fairly "dead" regional in San Jose and fans are sure to pull for the underdogs in that situation. Only caveat is that Butler is almost always a fan favorite everywhere it goes, but UTEP is an awfully good team, and Derrick Caracter is going to pose matchup problems.
- In the end, I love Kansas State's intensity, which I think will match Syracuse's. Not sure the Orange have seen a point guard as fast as Denis Clemente all season, and Jacob Pullen's long-range ability could pose problems, as well as Curtis Kelly's quickness in the paint.
- In general, I think this may be the most wide-open regional--probably as it should be, if Syracuse was the worst of the #1 seeds.