March Madness: Midwest Region Is The Group Of Death

It's not gonna be pretty in the Midwest Region this year. 

With the tournament's top overall seed, four regular season conference champions, four conference tournament champions, three conference Players of the Year, three conference Coaches of the Year, the nation's leading scorer, and as many as nine first-round NBA draft picks according to some predictions, "loaded" does not do this region justice.  Truly, it's the Group of Death.

As an example, let's take number four seed Maryland. If the ACC regular season co-champs get past Houston and D-1 top scorer Aubrey Coleman in the first round (which they should), they'll likely face Big 10 regular season co-champ and 2009 national runner-up Michigan State. The other five seeds in the tournament are Butler, Temple, and Texas A&M. Who would you want to play out of that group?  If you said "not Michigan State," then you and I agree.

This is to say nothing of No. 1 overall seed Kansas looming in the Sweet 16 for the winner of the presumed MSU/Maryland matchup. 

Now let's take Ohio State, the Midwest's No. 2 seed.  The Buckeyes won the Big 10 regular season and tournament championships, and have the conference player of the year in Evan Turner. 

Their reward?   Should they win the first round game, they will face either Oklahoma State and Big 12 Player of the Year James Anderson, or Georgia Tech and their lottery-pick frontcourt of Derrick Favors and Gani Lawal.   If they run that gauntlet, No. 3 seed and Big East powerhouse Georgetown awaits.

Missouri Valley Conference champions Northern Iowa, who have played relatively weak competition but absolutely dominated more or less everyone they played, are also in the mix.  If they upset UNLV in the first round, they'll almost assuredly face Kansas in the second round.  Maybe not a major Cinderella in the making, but they're still better than your average mid-major. 

I wonder how many people the Midwest Region head coaches murdered in their past lives to end up here.  The Group of Death moniker is clearly apropos. 

It will be interesting to see who from this stacked bracket will emerge...and who won't.