UNC-Oklahoma: 2009 Men's NCAA Tournament South Region Elite Eight Picks

Hopefully, you've had a chance to check out our site by now—The Sports Chat Place—where we've been doing college hoops picks against the spread all season.

There are five of us from The Sports Chat Place who also write on B/R: Ryan, Mitch, Dave, Shaun, and Steve. There is a very good chance that, if you have been following college basketball this season (even casually), you have read something by one of us.

During the NCAA Tournament, we have put together a few articles with all of our quick picks against the spread. The idea is that everyone uses the same line and are allowed to put their picks and one to two sentences.

In the Sweet 16 write-ups, I mentioned that the site had more than 650,000 hits (after having just over 500,000 at the start of the tournament). We now have over 700,000 hits since the site went up at the beginning of January!

Thank you to everyone who has checked out our site!

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NCAA Tournament Elite Eight—South Region

Sunday, March 29, 2009

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No. 1 North Carolina vs. No. 2 Oklahoma
5:05 PM ET

	Record	Conf	ATS	RPI	SOS	PF	PA
No. 2 Oklahoma	30-5	28-5	16-12-2	5	26	79.2	67.4
No. 1 North Carolina	31-4	29-4	12-17-2	3	22	90.5	72.4

	FG%	D. FG%	3P%	D. 3P%	FT%	RPG	SPG	APG	TPG	BPG
No. 2 Oklahoma	49.3	39.5	35.8	33.8	67.6	41.9	6.9	14.6	13.8
No. 1 North Carolina	48.2	41.3	38.3	34.9	75.7	45.7	8.6	18.4	12.6

Line: UNC -6.0

Mitch: Oklahoma +6.0—Inside game, outside game, enough to keep it close if not go all the way.
Dave: Oklahoma +6.0—Battle of the Bigs goes to the Sooners.
Ryan: Oklahoma +6.0—The 2008 POY takes on the most likely candidate for the 2009 POY. The Sooners would be a one-seed had they not dropped those two games without Blake Griffin—they prove that to everyone with a double-digit win over the Tar Heels.
Shaun: Oklahoma +6.0—Blake Griffin outplays Tyler Hansbrough but the Heels win a close one.
Steve: UNC -6.0—If Oklahoma is to have a chance of slowing down the Heels, they'll need Blake Griffin to be Blake Griffin, and they'll need a barrage of threes from their wing players. Most importantly, the Sooners can't turn the ball over like they did against Syracuse or Carolina will run them out of the FedEx Forum.

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If you enjoyed these picks, please check out The Sports Chat Place, where we will be previewing and picking every game that March Madness has to offer!