The 2011 Tournament

Holy smokes, this is the worst bracket I think I have ever seen. Once you get to the 3rd seed, I think it's a complete crap shoot. I just went by gut on all my picks (and I watch a LOT of basketball, so this isn't just fluff) and I had:
- 8 double digit seeds winning in the first round
- 5 upsets in the 2nd round
- A 10 seed (Michigan State) in the Elite 8
- a 5 seed (Kansas State) in the in the Final 4.
- 3 1 seeds (Kansas, Duke, Ohio State) in the Final 4.

I don't care for my bracket, because there is so much parity past the 2nd seeds. Here were my guiding forces:
- The SEC is complete garbage. I had Florida losing no matter who they played in the 2nd round.
- The West Coast conferences did extremely well last year, so I picked Pac 10 and WCC's Gonzaga to excel a little bit better than their seeds may have suggested.
- The Big East is solid, but the reason the conference tournament was so wild is because the top teams aren't elite. They tend not to do well in the Big Dance, and Pitt and Notre Dame, the conferences highest seeded teams are the worst offenders.
- I like the Big 12 and the ACC to be surprisingly successful this year from the middle of their conference. I think North Carolina is a little too immature and may take teams lightly like they did at the beginning of the season.

But in my opinion, the bracket is putrid. The lower seeds are almost as good as the higher seeds in far too many cases for me to be comfortable with any early round picks, but I think this will be a good year for the top seeds.