March Madness Bracket Analysis: The South Regional Is a Bear

Take a deep breath—especially those of you that have penciled Syracuse, Kansas, Kentucky, and Duke into your Final Four.

Let’s take a step back and analyze the South bracket a little deeper than, say, just handing it over to a club that may be the weakest No. 1 seed in the tournament and not nearly as talented as two of the No. 2 seeds.

Look, I get that this is Duke we’re talking about, but this isn’t your father’s Duke squad or even your crazy uncle’s team.

They’re a solid club that has wrecked shop (though splitting regular season honors with Maryland) in a conference enduring an uncharacteristically bad year.

But the problem with predicting Duke’s demise is, with most of the talent shipped off to the Midwest region, who’s going to knock off the Devils in the South?

Okay, let’s exhale and take a look.

The Headliners

Since Duke was run out of the gym by Villanova in the tournament last year, Coach K decided to make some tweaks on the defensive side of the ball to help his players stay in front of quick ball-handlers.

Offensively, the Devils lacked a true blow-by point guard and instead found themselves with three players they could run offense through. Another tweak from the master? Sure.

The fact of the matter is Duke’s a solid basketball team that’s coached as well as a team can be coached, but these Blue Devils are more system than sizzle, and their progression through the bracket might “bear” that out.

Villanova, Baylor, Siena, and Louisville all have equal or better athletes, and their systems are quite capable of knocking off the Blue Devils and advancing.

First, the second-seeded Villanova Wildcats are the guard-centric favorite to be the team that takes Duke down. After all, when these two teams squared off less than a year ago, the Wildcats ran the Blue Devils out of the gym. A rematch would interest me considering many of the wrinkles that Mike Krzyzewski made were a result of Villanova’s success in last year’s game.

Baylor is the other headliner in the bracket, and if you’ve seen the Bears play, you understand why.

The Bears’ terrific frontcourt has no equal in this region. It all starts with the Big 12’s leading shot blocker, 6′10″ Ekpe Udoh, a transfer from Michigan.

He’s superb on offense and defense.

He protects the interior of Baylor’s zone by erasing most offense from five feet and in. He also has great touch with his back to the basket, and the nightmare is that with his length and athleticism, there aren’t many players that can get to his shot. There’s not a player in this region that compares to Udoh.

Sophomore wing Anthony Jones, a 6′10″ version of Stacey Augmon, is another explosive finisher. Like Udoh, Jones’ length is a perfect fit for the back line of Baylor’s zone. If the Bears want some beef to bang inside, they have 7'0", 280-pound senior Josh Lomers, who is a good position defender but not much of a threat to score.

Baylor’s backcourt is a solid shooting group that includes three-point sniper LaceDarius Dunn and point guard Tweety Carter. Quincy Acy is another nice athletic 6'7" wing who won’t be overwhelmed physically by anyone in the region. I expect the Bears to make some noise in this bracket.

The Sleepers

Take your pick: Siena, St. Mary’s, Old Dominion, Louisville, and Utah State are all lower-seeded teams with a legitimate chance at an opening round upset.

But if you want a true sleeper that can make a deep run, look no further than the No. 13-seeded Siena Saints. They’re only a four-point underdog to Purdue and a grossly under-seeded team in this tournament. They’ll dispatch this hapless Boilermaker club in impressive fashion and then scare the hell out of whichever Aggie emerges from the first round matchup of, well, Aggies.

The Siena Saints are an experienced team led by pass-first senior point guard Ronald Moore and senior wing Edwin Ubiles, as well as the team’s leading scorer and MAAC player of the year, senior forward Alex Franklin. Franklin is as athletic as anyone in this region and the Saints’ go-to guy.

The other two starting spots are filled by junior forward Clarence Jackson and junior post Ryan Rossiter.

Siena is an experienced team full of upperclassmen, and they’re talented. Four of the five starters average double digits, while lead guard Moore averages seven points per game and an astounding eight assists to just two turnovers.

Additionally, the Saints are as athletic as most teams in America, but more importantly, their experience means that they are extremely comfortable in their own skin. They know their roles and play good team basketball as a result.

Siena also plays multiple defenses well, from traditional 2-3 zone to 1-3-1 three-quarter court trap to man to man. They also will pressure full court and trap quickly to catch you napping. They’re going to be a tough out in this region.

All-Regional Team

The South has a group of guards second to none, so our backcourt selections are going to be met with some argument, I’m sure. So be it.

I’ll start with Scottie Reynolds, the combo guard from Villanova, and pair him with LaceDarius Dunn, the pure shooter/scorer from Baylor. These guys may not be able to share the ball like we’d want, so let’s bring in Duke’s floor leader Jon Scheyer to settle things down. You’ll struggle to find three better shooting guards than this triumvirate anywhere in the nation.

In the frontcourt, give me that stat sheet-stuffing hybrid wing Alex Franklin of Siena. He’s an athletic beast that competes for 40 minutes. We’ll protect him inside with Ekpe Udoh of Baylor, an elite athlete with an interior game for days on both ends of the floor.

Our four man is Kyle Singler, another hybrid wing that will float around the arc looking for jumpers against bigger defenders. Put a smallish third guard on him and he’ll post you up.

Off the bench, give me the Richmond Spiders’ Kevin Anderson to come in and provide instant backcourt offense. Louisville’s Samardo Samuels gives us another big frontcourt athlete to rebound and score in the paint.

I’m betting this group wins the H-O-R-S-E competition if the Big Dance had one. Thank goodness it does not.

Prediction

Let’s start with the top side of the bracket. Duke will destroy the play-in opponent and face Louisville in the second round, because Cal will realize early on in their opening round game with the Cardinals that they’ve been playing a different caliber of basketball in the Pac-10.

Historically, Louisville has hammered Pac-10 opponents in the tournament, beating Stanford by 20 and Arizona by 40 the last two years.

That leaves us with an intriguing second round matchup between the Cardinals and the Blue Devils. The Devils are a poor matchup for Louisville because they aren’t overly physical inside.

Cardinal center Samardo Samuels is deadly when he’s allowed some room to operate, so Duke will have to bang and grind the talented Louisville post, and I’m not sure Brian Zoubek is athletic enough to do it effectively.

Also, Louisville will play some pressure and fall back into an active zone, which is the perfect antidote to Duke’s motion attack and general lack of team quickness.

The key may very well be Jerry Smith, because with him in the lineup paired with Edgar Sosa, the Cardinals will have some success getting into the lane on dribble penetration, leading to kick-outs for open looks against a Duke team that struggles to stay in front of dribblers at times.

If Smith is still too banged up to be effective, then not only is Sosa your one true penetrating threat, but as such you’ve taken away one of your best shooters to kick out to. Smith’s absence gives the Blue Devils some good help options defensively.

I’ll make a prediction: If Smith is healthy, Louisville gets the upset. If not, Duke wins.

In the lower quadrant, I like Texas A&M to bang their way to victory over a jump-shooting Utah State squad. If the game is ugly, A&M wins. If the game looks pretty and fluid, Utah’s Aggies get the W. I’m betting on ugly.

Siena will put Purdue out of its misery. The Boilers’ season ended when Robbie Hummel went down, and the Saints help Purdue find its shinebox.

Siena will upset the Aggies in the second round because they have the athletes and experience to make A&M play in an up-tempo, open floor game.

The Saints will then square off against the Devils. In this matchup, I like Duke’s size to exploit Siena’s lone post player Rossiter inside, getting Siena’s frontcourt in early foul trouble. The Blue Devils move on to the Elite Eight after a surprisingly close ball game against the double-digit seed.

On the bottom half of the bracket, Richmond’s talented backcourt exposes Saint Mary’s lack of athleticism and routs the Gaels, who’ve traveled three time zones for their whuppin’.

Villanova dominates in their first round game and then uses their depth in the backcourt to wear down the Richmond Spider guards.

Baylor cruises to the Sweet 16 with wins over Sam Houston and then the Fighting Irish, who are a poor match for the Bears. Notre Dame doesn’t have the guard play to slow down the tempo of the game on defense. Additionally, the Irish offense, one which is predicated on motion and back cuts, can’t get anything going against the Baylor zone.

A Baylor vs. Villanova matchup turns into a classic 94-foot, high-scoring game, but in the end the Bears advance because their interior is too much for the Wildcats. Udoh finishes with 27 points and eight blocks, looking like Gulliver among the Lilliputians.

The regional final in Houston between the Bears and the Blue Devils might as well be a road game for Duke. The Bears' zone is more bad news for a Blue Devil squad that likes to exploit mismatches via a motion game featuring Nolan Smith, Scheyer, and Singler.

When the three S’s have to manufacture offense through penetrate-and-kick scenarios exclusively, they struggle, especially when the size and athleticism of Baylor’s frontcourt makes finishing at the rim one of the toughest shots on the floor.

On offense, the Bears will struggle with Duke’s disciplined man to man that forces teams to be patient. However, Baylor will get just enough second-chance points from their athletes that they’ll win a hard-fought 72-68 game behind a partisan crowd.

The green and gold cut down the nets and Bear Crawl to Indy...

To face the East regional winner, which will be revealed later today.

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