Tournament Offers So Much More, and This Year It's Needed

I'm looking for North Carolina to win.

And I'm looking for a ton of upsets early. A ton.

The big-name, big-conference teams beyond the No. 1 seeds, simply aren't good enough to pick favorites when filling out a bracket.

You want early upsets? I can see second-seeded Georgetown going to the Final Four; I also can see the Hoyas losing a second-round match with Davidson, which has won 22 straight games, just like the Rockets. I could see Duke going to the Final Four; I also can see Duke losing a second-round match with West Virginia or the aforementioned Arizona. And when we start dealing with high-profile schools seeded, say, fifth, I can see even more upsets. It's certainly not crazy to pick George Mason to beat Notre Dame, or Temple to beat Michigan State.

Actually, there are players I'm more interested in seeing than teams.

Start with Michael Beasley of Kansas State and then move to Davidson's Stephen Curry. I want to see O.J. Mayo, who has gotten nothing but better late in his freshman season at USC. I want to see this kid, Dionte Christmas of Temple, a 6-foot-5 kid who has scored 37 and 29 points already this month. I want to see Cornell's Ryan Wittman (son of NBA Coach Randy Wittman) and U-Conn.'s 7-3, 265-pound athlete extraordinaire Hasheem Thabeet, who blocked 10 shots in a game against Notre Dame this season and whom I believe is going to be the next big man to have a major impact on the sport. I want to see George Mason's Final Four holdovers, Folarin Campbell and Will Thomas. I want to see all the shooters who play for Drake, which is pretty much everybody in a Drake uniform: Josh Young, Leonard Houston, Jonathan Cox and Adam Emmenecker. I want to see Wink Adams of UNLV -- just because his name is Wink.

There are plenty of presumably good first-round games to see them in, too, including Kansas State vs. Southern Cal, Beasley vs. Mayo.

There's Indiana vs. Arkansas in the first round, Notre Dame vs. George Mason, Davidson vs. Gonzaga, Butler vs. South Alabama, Clemson vs. Villanova, Marquette vs. Kentucky. I like Georgia, given the Bulldogs' spirit in winning the SEC tournament, but I like their opponent, Xavier, even more.

I like North Carolina coming out of the East Region. I like Texas over Memphis in the South. I like Xavier over UCLA in the West and Georgetown over Kansas in the Midwest. Mostly, I like March Madness and the NCAA tournament too much to think it can possibly be as pedestrian as the regular season that preceded it.