There are a lot of really good, veteran coaches in the South Region1. If you’re looking for a game where a coach is gonna do a stupid in the most public way, it won’t be in this section of the bracket2. Even down in the hinterlands you have guys like Greg Kampe at Oakland and Steve Lutz at Western Kentucky, guys who have shown the ability to win consistently wherever they are.
If I may give the Selection Committee a compliment for a second, the diversity of each quadrant this year looks like fun. I like that great offenses and great defenses are set up for a styles-make-fights matchup later on. Maybe it will come to pass, maybe it won’t, but a world Houston and Kentucky might meet is a world worth living in.
(Y’all still fucked up by putting Virginia in this bracket and I hope someone throws a balloon full of dog urine at each member’s car over the next calendar year.)
A quick South Region preview found below.
South Region
3 Favorites - A dichotomy at the top: Houston often finds itself unable to score enough to truly compete against great competition3. Kentucky has adopted a first-to-90 wins mentality, which is admirable in spirit if occasionally ugly on the court, while Duke just sort of tries to get all this to work more often than it doesn’t. Houston’s starting five on defense might be the most complete, complimentary unit on one end of the floor in college basketball in the last half-decade; they reduce every offense they face to maxing out at about 80 percent of their usual output, because every possession is a war of attrition that Houston under Kelvin Sampson was built for.