Villanova March Madness Preview

Bracket Thoughts
I love the #3 seed (mainly cause it keeps us as far away from the #1's as possible) and the fact that we are playing in Philly, but make no mistake - this will be no cakewalk. Every team in our pod this weekend is a tough, experienced, defensive-minded team that knows how to win close games. On the bright side, we didn't draw anybody with a superior size advantage, which should help keep Cunningham out of foul trouble (the # 1 key to our success).

AMERICAN
American starts 5 seniors, has quality guards and NCAA experience from last year when they were tied with #2 seed Tennessee with five minutes to play. Did I mention they are one of the top 3-point shooting % teams in the tournament and held teams to a mere 58 points per game this season? Pretty much a perfect recipe to be a Cinderella. That said, they don't come close to our talent level and their starting backcourt contains two guys that are about 5'8" and 5'10", so they will have to play near-perfect basketball to beat us. But if you don't think thats possible, then you don't know March Madness. Jay needs to set the defensive tone early and then let our guys do their thing on offense - I think we have too much talent and size for them to keep us from scoring. But if we let them knock down open 3s and hang around, the pressure will build on us.

The Anti-jinx disclaimer:
IF we are lucky enough to get by American, our 2nd round opponent will either be UCLA or VCU.

UCLA
UCLA is an underrated 6-seed. They aren't as good as last year when they were a 1 seed but they still probably should've been a 4 or a 5 seed. They have 3 very good seniors in Collison, Shipp and Aboya who have played in the last 3 Final Fours, so they have more NCAA tournament experience than any team in the entire field. They like to slow it down, play tough D and methodically pick you apart - as a result they lead the nation in field goal percentage. Darren Collison is one of the best perimeter defenders in the country and the thought of him harrassing Scottie Reynolds all game does not sound fun. (If you want to know what excellent perimeter D can do to Scottie, take a look at his 6.5 ppg average in two games against Louisville this year). At the same time they don't have anybody inside who can stay with Cunningham or back him down and get him into foul trouble. They also will struggle to score inside if the deep shots aren't falling. They are flawed for sure, but they have all the experience in the world and Howland is a great coach, so overall this matchup scares me. Thank god for the homecourt advantage, which pretty much makes this one a tossup.

VCU
Remember the name Eric Maynor - he could be this year's Stephen Curry. Yes, he's that good. As a sophomore, he led VCU to a first round upset over Duke. Now he's a senior averaging 22 points per game and is likely an NBA 1st round pick. As a result, VCU seems to be the trendy first round upset pick, with lots of people taking them to knock off UCLA. Without taking anything away from Scottie, if we play VCU, Maynor will be the best guard on the floor. They also have a 6'10" shot blocker and rebounder in Larry Sanders who could potentially give Dante some trouble. So they match up well against our star players. However, they don't have nearly as much quality depth as our team. To win a game like this, it would likely come down to guys like Anderson, Redding, Stokes and Fisher winning their individual matchups against VCU's role players. In that case, I like our chances. But you saw what Stephen Curry single-handedly did to the bracket last year, so anything is possible given Maynor's talent level.