Purdue is on Its Way to Sweetness

I'm going to take a strong six seed in Purdue to my Sweet 16. They have been a ranked team through much of the season and seem to have a relatively easy path through the first couple of rounds.

Purdue has won almost all of the games that they were favored to win this season. Their losses to teams like Indiana, Clemson, and Michigan State were not bad losses considering the strength of those teams. Their final game was a bad loss to Illinois, however, as they had previously beaten them twice in the regular season.

That one loss should not overshadow the significant wins they had this year including Louisville, Michigan St., and Wisconsin.

Their first round matchup pits the Boilermakers against Baylor who stumbled into the tournament losing six of their last 10 games. Their biggest wins of the season came against Notre Dame and Winthrop both in the early stages of their season. 

Some of their key losses came against Texas A&M, Arkansas, and Oklahoma St. The Bears enter the tournament having lost to last place Colorado in the Big 12 tournament. 

Baylor is a team that is vulnerable underneath because much of their scoring comes from outside shooting and free throws. Purdue should have the size and strength to easily cruise and win this game.

They should then meet up with the three seed Xavier in the next round. Xavier is coming off an upset loss to St. Joseph's. They cruised through to the Atlantic 10 title only slipping to Temple in addition to St. Joe's. Temple and Xavier are the only other A-10 schools in the NCAA tournament.

Purdue is led by three players all scoring in double figures while Xavier has a more balanced attack. The fact that Purdue has three talented players only means that if one of them has a bad game, then the other two will have to pick up the scoring load.

I don't see all three players having a bad game here and Purdue should be able to win this game in close fashion to advance to the Sweet 16.