He took advantage of the transfer portal to give UM a much-needed makeover, acquiring point guard Charlie Moore from DePaul and top rebounder Jordan Miller from George Mason. Jim Larranaga, making his fifth NCAA trip in 11 years with the Hurricanes, led the Hurricanes to a 14-6 league record, with three of those losses coming by one point.
My other double-digit flyers are both in the wildly unpredictable Midwest regional, where I took 10th-seeded Miami - a team coming off three consecutive losing seasons and picked to finish 12th in the ACC – and 11th-seeded Iowa State to face each other in the Sweet 16.
I’ve got them eliminating Ohio State and second-seeded Villanova to reach another Sweet 16. 7 seed after making it to the second weekend as a No. Plus, with Sister Jean still in good health at 102 and ready to cheer/pray for her beloved Ramblers, you can’t dismiss the chances of a No. The Ramblers have a new head coach from those previous two NCAA appearances, former Loyola assistant Drew Valentine, so he’s intimately familiar with how the program navigated its way to tournament glory. 1 seed Illinois with relative ease, 71-58, before falling to double-digit seed Oregon State. And whadda you know? Loyola went on another run, advancing to the Sweet 16 by knocking off No. 11 seed in 2018, the Ramblers returned to March Madness last year with a then 101-year-old Sister Jean in tow. Who can forget Sister Jean, the good-luck charm and team chaplain for the Loyola-Chicago Ramblers? The Roman Catholic nun was the inspiring force behind one of the most remarkable Cinderella stories in NCAA tournament history because Loyola didn’t turn out to be a one-hit wonder.Īfter that miraculous run to the Final Four as a No. I found room for three double-digit teams to crash the Sweet 16 party, including one accompanied by the most famous centenarian in March Madness history: Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt. 10 seed in East), all of whom I penciled in for at least one victory. 13 seed in Midwest) and San Francisco (No. 11 seed in East), South Dakota State (No. It was tempting to go with ACC tournament champion Virginia Tech (No. The tricky part, which is why brackets are so difficult to get right, comes in identifying which double-digit seed(s) are going to have at least two shining moments needed to reach the Sweet 16. The only years where that didn’t happen in the past 36 tournaments was 20. We can almost always count on a double-digit seed, or two, or three, or four, or five (happened in 1999) to advance to the Sweet 16. Since the NCAA began a 64-team field in 1985, two double-digit seeds had never won a combined three games on the second weekend in the same year.Īre we going to see more calamity along those lines in 2022? The guess here is not as much, but enough to make things interesting.īefore getting to my Final Four picks and eventual national champion (hint: I believe in second chances), let’s address the first week of the NCAA tournament commonly known as the “bracket-buster” portion of the show. 1 overall seed Gonzaga to overtime in the national semifinals. 12 seed Oregon State went on to reach the Elite Eight and 11th-seeded UCLA made it to the Final Four, pushing No. Making those upsets more chaotic was that No. Rarely was that hoops turbulence more evident than last year when four double-digit seeds made it to the Sweet 16. It’s not a disease, but a state of disorder that has traditionally plagued the first week of the NCAA tournament, not to mention shredding my annual entertainment-purposes-only bracket for the Times-Union.
#THREE DIGIT CRYSTAL BALL NUMBER GUESSER FULL#
After COVID-19 became an overriding theme for March Madness the past two seasons, leading to one cancelled NCAA tournament, arenas with full capacities this year are no doubt bracing themselves for another round of CHAOS-21.
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