Compelling Draw for UCLA and Duke to Navigate

This is, without queston, the most entertaining of the four brackets. One can only hope for a UCLA-Duke regional final if only so most people can be convinced that both teams are getting all the calls from the officials.

It probably won't happen.

If there's a God, Drake beats UCLA in the round of 16 to avenge the school's Final Four loss in 1969. Drake is about as good a story as there is in the country, making the tournament for the first time in 37 years after dominating the Missouri Valley Conference all season.

UCLA will cruise the first weekend, playing in Anaheim first against No. 16 Mississippi Valley State and then against either fading Brigham Young or Texas A&M. A&M will probably win, hang tough for a while against UCLA and then get ready for Mike Sherman's coaching debut in the fall.

Drake drew Western Kentucky, which isn't an easy first-round game. Drake should survive that game but will have real trouble in the second round with Connecticut, which has size and a coach who has won the whole thing twice. U-Conn. may have been the best team in the Big East for a good chunk of the season and, because it has Hasheem Thabeet in the middle, can challenge UCLA.

That game, if it happens, will be one of the best in the entire tournament, certainly a highlight of the regional semifinals.

The bottom half of the draw will all be played at Verizon Center the first weekend, and it should be fun. Duke-Belmont likely won't be too close although the Blue Devils are vulnerable on any night when they don't shoot at least 40 percent from three-point range. West Virginia-Arizona will go to the wire, even though Arizona probably shouldn't be in the tournament. Look, the Wildcats played a tough nonconference schedule, but they lost twice to Arizona State; lost at home to Virginia and were 8-10 in the Pac-10. If Tom O'Connor, the selection committee chairman, had been serious about ultimately making close decisions based on who would win head-to-head, Virginia Tech has to get the nod over Arizona and, for that matter over Baylor. Seth Greenberg is right to be going, for lack of a better word, insane.

Arizona's still a tough out, but West Virginia should survive and will give Duke all it wants -- perhaps more -- in the second round. By the way, if you are wondering why Duke as a No. 2 is here instead of Raleigh it's simple: Duke would rather be here where it won't be booed by all the North Carolina fans in the building. Seriously.

Having said that, Baylor doesn't belong. It is a great story four years after the Dave Bliss debacle, and the Bears can certainly beat Purdue (see Big Ten, overrated) to advance to probably play Xavier -- although after what Georgia did this weekend, anything is possible. Dennis Felton is one of two Howard grads coaching in the tournament (Milan Brown of Mount St. Mary's is the other) and what his team did in the SEC tournament -- four wins in three days after four wins in three months in conference play -- is a story for the ages.

Still, they should be playing in Dayton. Xavier ought to beat Baylor and advance to play Duke. The team that wins that game isn't beating UCLA or U-Conn., although Xavier would have a better shot than Duke.