If the Mountain West wants to silence the haters they will more than have the chance in a wide open region.
After four months of winnowing, the greatest single-elimination contest is sports is set to begin. From 362 D1 basketball programs, 68 have been chosen to spend three weekends playing for the sport’s national title. Each of the four regions will battle to send one representative to the Final Four. We start with the Midwest.
Oh, Mountain West Conference, what will you ever have to do to impress the Selection Committee? This committee may have been the most widely reviled since the Politburo, but no one will despise them as much as the denizens of the MWC. Here their champion, the champion of a six bid league, is an eight seed. Colorado St, a top 40 team all year, lands on the ten line in a play in game. That’s tough.
What is also tough is this Purdue team. You already know the names: Zach Edey, Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer, Matt Painter. You also know what happened last season when FDU dragged a first round game into the muck and dared Purdue to beat them from deep. That team was 276th in the nation in three point shooting. This iteration is second in the nation in three point shooting. These are not last year’s Boilermakers, but they are here to avenge that team.
Who springs the big upset?
Not St. Peter’s. Yes, the Peacocks are here again. No, they aren’t good. Colorado St was excellent this season, but has slid late. Since February, the Rams are 45th in the nation in efficiency. That’s not bad, but Texas is 16th. The Rams will monster you inside though, and that plays anywhere. Two teams that are much closer in efficiency are #6 South Carolina and #11 Oregon. The Ducks are red hot right now and just won the final Pac 12 tournament. Finally, McNeese St will be a trendy upset pick. They defend like their very lives depend on it.
Easiest team to cheer against: #1 Purdue
The world is just weary of these guys. Zach Edey gets a whistle that would make Michael Jordan jealous. Matt Painter is the goofy dad next door who does things like mow his lawn at 8am on Saturday. They play slow, they play bully ball, they hope the refs just keep sending Edey to the line. Hard pass. Honorable mention goes to #10 Virginia, who shouldn’t be in the tournament and plays brutally hard to watch basketball.
Most fun team to cheer for: #13 Samford
I’ll be honest, I had to look up what the mascot for Samford is. Samford is called the Bulldogs, but the image that conjures up of a sluggish dog looking vaguely grumpy couldn’t be farther from how these guys play. They play the fastest tempo in this region, they chuck well and with abandon from deep, and the crowd the line and dare you to throw it inside and be boring while they have fun. If you get it in there the amazingly named Achor Achor patrols the lane looking for shots that have let their guard down that he can slap into low earth orbit. These guys aren’t great, but they are going to be fun to watch.
Player to watch: Enrique Freeman, #14 Akron
This is a brutal draw for Akron. They are as 14 as a 14 seed gets, and the Creighton team they are running into is, well, Creighton. Akron features, though, the best player and story you’ve never heard of. Enrique Freeman is from the east side of Cleveland, which is not an easy place to be from. He went to St. Martin de Porres on St. Clair, the street made famous by Bone Thugs and Harmony, and not for being the garden spot of our lovely city. Freeman had a grand total of zero scholarship offers for basketball when he graduated after D3 Geneva College turned him down.
So he walked on at Akron after his mom told him he should try it. He had grown to 6-7, but was still just a skinny dude who loved ball. He played 13 minutes as a freshman. Then, everything changed. Freeman (sort of) filled out his body and after three games was starting as a sophomore. He started inhaling the defensive glass. As a sophomore he had a defensive rebounding rate of 28.9%, his career low. Since then, he’s grown to maybe 6-8, 220 and become the best defensive rebounder in the nation. If an opponent misses, there’s nearly a 33% chance Freeman grabs it. He blocks 6% of shots, is nails at the line, and won the MAC player of the year this season.
Oh, and he gave up the academic scholarship he arrived at Akron on for an athletic one. Then he graduated and started a business managing his NIL opportunities and helping other with media opportunities. And he’s earning his MBA now. All this and you can’t find someone with anything bad to say about the kid. Full disclosure: I went to Akron for postgrad work and obviously am not objective about this guy. He’ll have his hands full against Creighton, but he’s a guy worth cheering for.
Best first round matchup: #6 South Carolina v. #11 Oregon
These teams are not very different in terms of their metric profiles. Both play slow, though South Carolina are glacial. Oregon play better on defense, SC better on offense. This is a brutal draw for a team that would have thought landing on the six line would stand them in better stead.
Boom or bust team: #4 Kansas
If Kevin McCullar and Hunter Dickinson play, these guys can beat anyone, as evidenced by their win over UConn this season. They also beat Tennessee and very nearly knocked off Iowa State. If those two don’t play or aren’t full strength, this team is not deep at all. They are 318th in bench minutes even when those guys were playing. Neither of McCullar or Dickinson were at full strength in Kansas last two games. The Jayhawks lose them by a total of 50.
Underseeded: #8 Utah St
The Aggies are 38th in NET, 25th in KPI, and 23rd in SOR. They were 8-6 in the top two quads and didn’t have any losses in the bottom two quads. For all that they get the same seed as a Florida Atlantic team that has two Q4 losses and finished 99th in strength of schedule. The MWC finished with six teams in the tournament and somehow their regular season champion gets the grim honor of playing TCU and then Purdue (well, probably).
Sweet Sixteen picks:
#1 Purdue, #5 Gonzaga, #3 Creighton, #2 Tennessee
Regional final prediction
Creighton over Purdue