Elite 8 Preview

One good game and three blowouts tonight and the final eight are set. No surprises Friday night -- Syracuse would have lost even without Jonny Flynn's injury; he was the only Orange to show up and was the team's best player even after bruising his back when his attempt to draw a charge from Blake Griffin late in the first half had with a predictable result. Elsewhere, Arizona and Gonzaga looked overmatched against Louisville and North Carolina, respectively, and Kalin Lucas outplayed Sherron Collins in the final moments to lead Michigan State over Kansas in a game where neither team looked like it belonged in this late stage of the tournament.

We're not at all far from seeing four No. 1 seeds in the Final Four for the second straight year...and the second year ever since the field expanded to 64 teams. This gives me an opportunity, before a quick breakdown of the upcoming games, to weakly segue to a point I wanted to make about Arizona before we close out their 2008-09 season but couldn't cram into the above paragraph.

I am certain, if all four No. 1s do advance, that someone will mention what a great job the selection committee did. (That's the segue.) That will be in contrast to the popular reaction when Arizona's name was called on Selection Sunday, which was that the Wildcats didn't deserve a bid. Even when Arizona was breezing by Utah and Cleveland State in the first two rounds, their critics didn't let up. The argument goes that the team's performance in the Tournament doesn't prove anything, and that the merit of their bid should be evaluated only on the basis of their regular season record.

While I agree that being results-oriented isn't a proper way to determine whether a team deserves to be there -- in the same way that the winner of the tournament isn't necessarily the best team in the country -- I disagree that Arizona didn't prove anything last weekend. The Wildcats were one of a good number of teams whose resumes were decidedly mediocre. The way the tournament is set up, some of these "bubble" teams will get in, some won't, and it's pretty much anybody's guess which teams are the best of that group. Arizona's strong performance in this tournament -- the blowout loss to Louisville aside -- proves something about them as a team. It's not enough to definitively say that they are better than San Diego State or Providence or Creighton -- they had an opportunity those teams did not -- but it is enough to say that they weren't undeserving of a bid.

Anyway, on to the previews:

Game most ripe for an upset: East, #1 Pittsburgh vs. #3 Villanova. None of the eight remaining teams can boast the wins the Wildcats have in this tournament: 89-69 over UCLA and 77-54 over Duke. Those squads aren't vintage versions of their programs, but it's still impressive, more impressive than Connecticut's 40-plus-point margin of victory in the first two rounds, more impressive even than Louisville's 103-64 dismantling of Arizona and Carolina's 98-77 stifling of Gonzaga. It's also a long way from last Thursday afternoon, just a few moments after halftime, when American University had scored the first two buckets of the second twenty minutes to take a 14-point lead. Since then, Villanova's been about as good as they can be.

Pittsburgh, on the other hand, hasn't found its rhythm yet. They were the top seed to struggle in their first-round game (the other was Louisville), didn't pull away from Oklahoma State until very late, and then went down to the wire with Xavier. They are not long for this tournament if they don't find their way, fast.

Moreover, Villanova is familiar with Pittsburgh and isn't scared of them. In fact, they beat the Panthers in their only meeting in Big East play, a 67-57 victory in Philadelphia in late January. A repeat is very possible.

Game least ripe for an upset: Midwest, #1 Louisville vs. #2 Michigan State. In the interest of full disclosure, I should note now that my bracket has the Spartans winning this game, the product of me not wanting to pick all four top seeds and thinking that the Cardinals were the most overrated of the No. 1s. All of this ignored the fact that I've been saying all year that the Big Ten is wildly overrated itself, an opinion supported in the first two rounds, where five of the seven teams in the conference lost.

I still think MSU can beat Louisville, but not if either team plays the way the way they did Friday night. Louisville is too deep and talented to be beaten by these Spartans at their best, and it's going to take an offensive performance several notches above what MSU has shown thus far to beat the 'ville on even an off-night.

Game that should be most entertaining: South, #1 North Carolina v. #2 Oklahoma. As CBS' Jim Nantz pointed out incessantly on Friday night's broadcast, this game pits last year's consensus player of the year, Tyler Hansbrough, against this year's consensus player of the year, Blake Griffin. It should also show off a heck of a lot of offensive fireworks, as both teams are explosive on that end. The Sooners probably aren't as explosive as they appeared to be against Syracuse, but Carolina isn't known for its defense, either.

On the other end, I don't think there's a team in America that can stop Carolina when the Heels are hitting on all cylinders, and with point guard Ty Lawson playing as if he was healthy (he's not), the Heels are close to hitting on all cylinders.

Game for which I have no superlative: West, #1 Connecticut vs. #3 Missouri. Mizzou is one of two number-three seeds remaining (Villanova's the other), and incredibly, that makes them a Cinderella in the remaining field. The Tigers put a hurting on Memphis in the Sweet Sixteen, but Connecticut is everything Memphis isn't: Big, poised, fundamentally solid. Memphis was a good matchup for Missouri; Connecticut isn't. I still think the Huskies are going to meet their match in this tournament, but it won't be Saturday.