Soup's #1 Seeds

March madness addicts are strewn across the country tonight waiting patiently for selection Sunday. Anyone hooked on the NCAA tournament as long as I've been knows to be done mowing the lawn or playing catch with the kids by 255pm so you won't miss a minute of the festivities on CBS.

The 2009 tournament is starting to become clear to me at the top. The #1 seed in the tournament has to be the Louisville Cardinals. True, they caught a break getting Pitt at home in Louisville and not at the Petersen Events Center but they won the Big East regular season title AND the Big East Championship. That's enough for me.

FYI-When you hear basketball cognescenti talk about an "NBA body", they mean a body like Earl Clark. Clark and Terrence Williams, boosted by the solid inside contributions of Freshman Samardo Samuels, have put it together.

I thought this team had a solid shot to win the NCAA championship but winning the Big East Tournament doesn't help toward that goal, in fact I think it hurts their chances but they've earned the #1 seed.

The second #1 seed goes to North Carolina. They were ranked higher than Pitt going into the conference tournaments and they won a game in the ACC tournament whereas Pitt lost their first game in the Big East tourney to West Virginia.

Pitt then becomes the third #1 seed. True, Connecticut showed tons of heart in the 6-ot thriller that rocked Manhattan Thursday night but Pitt beat them twice head to head, both times when UConn was the #1 team in the country.

Connecticut or Memphis is tougher to call for the last #1 seed. I understand people not giving Memphis much credit for steamrolling through Conference USA but they've won 25 straight games and they did reach the final last year.

Memphis nudges UConn to a #2 seed but those two teams should be placed in the same bracket so they can settle it on the floor. Oklahoma and Pitt should be in the same bracket so the clash of the titans, DeJuan Blair and Blake Griffin, can become a reality.

I like Gonzaga as a dark horse but I think Pitt wins the NCAA tournament over Memphis (if they're on opposite sides of the bracket). As a Pitt fan, the team I don't want to play is Connecticut. It's hard to beat a great team like that three straight times and I'd prefer a new challenge so I'm hoping someone else will knock of the Huskies but I'm not a sadist, it's okay if they lose in regulation.