March Madness Bracket Tips

If you are like a lot of people, you are filling out a bracket this year for the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  Also, if you are like a lot of people, you may be waiting until the final day to submit said bracket,  in the hopes that you will get the most up to date inside information.  So, without further adieu, my Bracket Busting tips for 2015!  In this tourney, there are quite a few match ups that look quite straightforward.  Like Wisconsin vs. Coastal Carolina.  A 1 seed vs. a 16 looks like an easy pick, but if you dive deeper, you see that Coastal Carolina may be the finest 16 seed in recent history.  I say they have the skill to beat Wisconsin.  Now, I'm not saying it will happen, but this game may not be as clear cut as it first looks.  This tourney is also filled with match ups between low seeded, high octane offensive teams versus all around solid high seeds.  Take Davidson vs. Iowa. Davidson is an incredible scoring team, and that's pretty much all they are incredible at.  Their defense is not super solid, and that could cause a problem.  Iowa is a well rounded team, with solid play on pretty much all fronts.  You might me tempted to pick the fast, shooting team.  But the other side of you is saying to go with the safe, higher seed.  Well, in this case, I do like Davidson in this match up. However, I don't recommend simply choosing the high offense, low defense teams.  You need to research the match up on both sides of the ball.  Will Iowa be able to take advantage of the Davidson defense, or will they miss the opportunity? If you ask me, I would say Davidson is poised to make a first round upset this year.  Two games I really feel are split almost evenly are VCU vs. Ohio State and Baylor vs. Georgia State.  VCU caused, well, havoc on defense this year. They swipe the ball away at a large clip and play lots of transition offense.  Ohio State has some of the top players in the country, led by Guard D'Angelo Russell.  Ohio State is a very dangerous team, and could pose a problem for VCU. However, the pressure of VCU caused me to lean ever so slightly to the VCU side.  Baylor and Georgia State are so close, I looked at this game longer than any other.  The slight statistical advantage of Baylor was the tie breaker, but look into this one.  Good luck and check back for more!

NBA Rookies

For the record, I am not too sure that Andrew Wiggins is the future of the NBA.  Honestly, I never was.  No offense to Wiggins, he is a good player and I never doubted his skills.  However, if I was looking for the next NBA great, I would be looking more at Nikola Mirotic.  This Chicago forward has all the skill needed to make it big in the NBA. He can currently play the 3 or 4 position, although he may be more suited to the 4 because of his size and the fact that he is a step slower than other 3s.  However, in the future, he may play more of a Mehmet Okur role, playing both the power forward and center.  Of course, Mirotic has the potential to be much greater than Okur, with a shooting stroke from long range that is exceptional for a 6 foot 10 inch player.  If you compare Wiggins with Mirotic using NBA stats, it looks something like this.  Mirotic has Wiggins bested in all of the field goal percentage stats, including True Shooting%, Effective Shooting%, Three-point Shooting% and traditional Field Goal%.  Wiggins, however, has more points per game. This is mainly because Wiggins plays for the Timberwolves, a team that is in real need of a productive star after the Kevin Love trade.  In Chicago, there is less of a need for a rookie forward to play big minutes and score points.  Then, if you get into Player Efficiency Rating, which by the way I am still not sure about, but is the gold standard currently, Mirotic wins again.  So, Minnesota has a talented scorer with many skills and a large amount of potential in Wiggins, but Chicago may have hit the jackpot with Nikola Mirotic.