The Brackets Are Out

The pairings for the NCAA men's basketball tournament have been announced. They can be found here.

There were a few surprises along the way. I didn't expect North Carolina to receive a #1 seed, much less the #2 seed in the entire tournament. I also didn't expect Florida to be the top seed for the whole tournament.

The only teams that got in the tournament that I did not project are Arkansas and Stanford. Those are not surprising, as the Hogs made a big run in the SEC tournament, and the Cardinal didn't have any bad losses while going 10-8 in the tough Pac-10.

The only teams I had projected into the field that missed the tournament are Syracuse and Kansas State. I was mildly, but not totally surprised.

For what it's worth, I correctly projected 63 out of 65 teams in the field. I projected 44 out of 65 teams within one seed of what they received in the tournament.

The state of Texas came up big. 5 teams from Texas are in the field: Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, North Texas, and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. And they said this was a football state.

Bracket analysis to come during the week...