The Committee....

It seems like every year there are awesome, inspiring, capitvating story lines in the tournament.  This guy is facing the team he used to coach, this team is playing the team it got upset by the year before, these two schools are only 60 miles apart, etc.  The NCAA would like you to believe these are coincidences.  They are not.  The committee clearly rigs the system to force these matchups, and it is especially egregious this year.  We'll have more in depth breakdown of regions, teams, and predictions as the week goes along, but here's a starting point.

Wichita State is a 7 seed and Kansas is a 2 seed.  

This is absurd.

Wichita State was 14th in KenPom, and similarly ranked across whatever your preferred ranking  metric is.  They split the head to head with their primary in conference rival (Northern Iowa) and have similar resumes. Northern Iowa is 12th in KenPom and received a fifth seed.  Are you really arguing there is a 5+ team gap between the two?  No. The committee clearly set this up for an all Kansas battle in the round of 32, and its just not fair - to either Kansas and Wichita State.

Virginia and Michigan State... Again.

Last year Virginia and Sparty played an epic game in the sweet 16 with Michigan State pulling off the upset.  Once again the two schools are primed for a re-match, just one round earlier.  It's tough to believe that the committee was not aware of this storyline when making the bracket.  They could have easily slotted either school higher, pointing towards Michigan States excellent B10 tournament or UVA's overall resume.  However, the storyline is too great to pass up, so let's ram them into a second round matchup, make Sunday exciting!

Dayton... In Dayton!

"What a revolutionary idea, we can have Dayton, in Dayton! That will surely drive up interest in the play-in games." - Some guy on the committee.

This is a Dayton team that was 25-8, finished second in the A-10 (which is good this year), got to the conference finals, and has quality wins over VCU, Ole Miss, Rhode Island.  I have trouble believing Dayton was genuinely one of the last four teams in the tournament after building such a solid body of work.  This is just another storyline ploy by the committee.

UCLA is in the tournament. I repeat, UCLA is in the tournament.

While this is not a matchup issue, it's a major screw up by the committee.  UCLA is in the tournament. This is not a mistake.  They are not even in the play-in games, but are instead comfortably in the tournament.  This is a team that nearly got doubled up by Utah this year, that was swept by Arizona, couldn't win a game on the road, and lost almost every big game it played in.  How do you put a team like this in the field and leave out Richmond, Temple, and Colorado State?  It just does not makes sense and quite frankly, it is outrageous.