Selection Sunday March 13, 2022

Selection Sunday is coming up. The field of 64 teams will be announced for the 2022 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament in a few days. Some teams already earned an official entry into the tournament, (Chattanooga) for example, by winning the Southern Conference. Others like Duke, Arizona, and Gonzaga, to name a few, will make it despite how their outcome in their conference tournament plays out, and some teams who nobody is even thinking about will find their way in by an unlikely conference championship victory. Duke, who is favored to win the ACC this week, is coming off a tough loss, perhaps one of the toughest in the school's history, as they lost at home to their rival North Carolina- a game that also happened to be legendary Coach K's final home game at Duke. 90+ alumni were in attendance for that final game, and it really is a shame that the Blue Devils couldn't send Coach K out with a victory in that final home game for him, but a college championship would more than make up for it. Duke is favored to win the ACC, and they are +1200 to win the championship.

That Tar Heel victory put them into the top 25, so I suspect North Carolina will make the tournament as long as they don't have too early of an exit in the ACC tournament.  Gonzaga still remains the number one overall seed with a 24-3 regular season record. Last year they were undefeated in the regular season, all the way up until the championship game, but ultimately fell to Baylor in the finals. So, will that loss motivate them to come back and win it all this year? It might! But this year there is a lot more competition in my opinion. Also, these games are all being played in front of audiences again, which is something that Gonzaga didn't have to deal with last year. Gonzaga is +375 to win the championship, followed by Arizona at +600 and Kentucky at +750. You'll always get that Cinderella team or two every year, and we'll have that again this year, but like last year, in the end when the initial flurry of games winds down, I think we'll be left with top 1-3 seeds in the Final Four!

Buddy M.

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