Whats with all these top seeds - zeroice's Blog

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Whats with all these top seeds

Posted on March 14, 2009 at 05:31 PM.

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Will this be a preview of what March Madness will entail..Upset city perhaps

High seeds fall, turbulent season continues
Saturday, March 14, 2009

Posted by Pat Forde
INDIANAPOLIS -- Within minutes of each other Saturday afternoon, the champions of the Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conferences both bit the tournament dust. Goodbye, Michigan State, at the hands of Ohio State. Goodbye, North Carolina, bounced by Florida State. Earlier in the day, SEC champ LSU was thumped by Mississippi State. All that is just part of the Championship Week trend. And that trend is the continuation of an entertainingly turbulent season.
Of the six biggest conferences, only one regular-season champion has even reached its tourney final. That would be Louisville of the Big East, which in a span of three days has gone from an outside shot at a No. 1 NCAA tournament seed to being in the argument for the overall No. 1 seed in the entire tournament.
It has been that wild.
The top two seeds in the Pac-10, Washington and UCLA, were run out before the final. The top two seeds in the Big 12, Kansas and Oklahoma, didn't even make the semis. Neither Big East No. 2 seed Pittsburgh nor No. 3 Connecticut made the semis in New York.
And really, the upsets have trickled down through some of the mid-major conferences as well.
An Atlantic 10 final between Temple and Duquesne? Certainly not in anyone's projections.
In the Mountain West, top seed BYU was dismissed before the final.
After the Buckeyes beat the Spartans here pretty much wire-to-wire, I asked both coaches whether the tumult was a sign of things to come. Both said they expect form to hold a bit better in the NCAAs, where there is more rest and the teams don't know each other as well -- but Tom Izzo also made the point that parity is here to stay.
Hard to argue with that after seeing what's happened this week. And all season.