NCAA 2011 March Madness Bracket

The HIMYM gang even picked Duke to reach the National Championship Game. Click the image to see clearly. | Credit: How I Met Your Mother

Here is a short blog entry about my March Madness picks this year. Last year, I was successful in predicting who will win the NCAA tournament (thus beating Bill Simmons and President Obama’s brackets in the process). It was a lucky pick (based from my gut). This year, I will attempt to beat their brackets again. I have not seen Obama’s bracket though. It also took me little time to make my picks for the NCAA tourney outcome this year but I have to say that I am more informed on the stories behind the teams… ahem! Jimmer’s 52 points. Ahem! I think I can explain some of my picks as well. Without much further ado, shown below is my March Madness Bracket for 2011:


After pondering for quite some time, I ended up picking Ohio State to reach the Final Four instead of my initial gut pick, the UNC Tar Heels (yes, I am dreaming for a Duke-UNC Final Four battle). Ohio State is just too strong and UNC is too young (making it a risky pick). On the other side of things, I did not pick Kansas to advance. This decision might backfire because Kansas is one of the pundits’ favorites to advance this year but I did not want to have an all-number one seed Final Four so I put Purdue in the Final Four. Thanks to the latest news in ESPN (before I publish this, I accidentally saw the headline). Kelsey Barlow of Purdue is suspended for the remainder of the tournament. I do not want to waste my Final Four/National Championship Game picks on a team that has a missing player.

Last year, Duke had an easy division. Actually, I did not know of it but after reading some NCAA articles in the past 365 days, I learned that my Blue Devils were lucky. This year, they face arguably the toughest bracket to the Final Four. They get to face either a strong defensive Texas team or the red-hot Arizona Wildcats in the Sweet Sixteen. If they do survive, they get to face another great defensive team in SDSU or the Kemba Walker-led UConn Huskies. Nevertheless, I am picking Duke because I am a homer. But if I were not a Duke fan, this division would have been the easiest to pick the 2-4 seeds.

On the other hand, Pittsburgh is the luckiest #1 seed in the tourney. They are in a cakewalk division that even if I do not actually want to pick Pitt to win it, I am still picking them to advance. I have Utah State advancing to the Sweet Sixteen but I doubt they will beat Pitt. Utah State is a 12th seed for a reason. As for the lower half, I doubt Jimmer Fredette’s BYU will go far. Brandon Davies’ loss is too much. They will also be facing a streaking Gonzaga team which only lost to San Diego State by 3 (the same team that pummeled Brigham Young last week). I have Gonzaga facing Izzo’s Michigan State. This might be a troublesome pick because I am going to trust Izzo to do the same magic trick he has pulled off in the past two years. Either way, I really do not trust the Gators (even if they have the best chance of upsetting Pittsburgh in this division).

As for my National Champion pick, I am going with… wait for it…Duke. Yes, I will do it for the second year in a row. This is because everybody is on the Ohio State Buckeyes bandwagon. Since I do not trust Pitt that much, I picked Purdue to face Duke. I say the Blue Devils beat the Boiler Makers two years in a row. I picked Kansas to beat Pittsburgh because I really do not trust Pittsburgh. However, I am going for my favorite team to win it all. Kansas, like Ohio State, is a favorite pick by pundits. I just want to go against the flow. The Devils have Coach K and a veteran squad that has done it already.

Go Duke!