Michigan, Illinois, Penn State, and Michigan State had very different seasons. Michigan and Penn State played well down the stretch to earn their bid to the tournament, while MSU played a complete up-and-down season, and Illinois played like a dog down the stretch blowing a 12 point lead against Michigan with about 5 minutes to play. Anyways, out of this group, the only team that caught a draw where I could see them winning more than 1 game is Izzo and MSU. Anyways, here's how Chet sees things playing out for these teams:
Michigan : Michigan has a bunch of quality freshmen and I think this year will be the year that Michigan uses as a jumping off point for next year. With most of their team returning next year, specifically their dynamic backcourt, I see next year being the year that they make a run to the sweet 16, but this year is not that year. Michigan's comeback against the Illini was absolutely fantastic because the Greek was all over it, and it was against Illinois. Michigan has some big time shooters who could prove to be huge in their first game, but I see that game going either way. Even if they are able to beat a more athletic and quicker Tennessee team, they run into a Duke team that brings back most of a team that won last year's title. Prognosis: I see Michigan losing by 10-15 points against Duke in the second round. Tennessee and degenerate coach Bruce Pearl do not even deserve to be in this tournament and I like Michigan to beat Tennessee by 5 points in the first round.
Illinois getting a 9 seed after their performance down the stretch is ridiculous. The Illini played awful down the stretch in the Big Ten and laid an egg in the quarters against Michigan blowing a 12 point lead. This is a team made up of predominantly seniors and blowing leads like they did against Michigan and earlier in the season against Purdue shows how mentally weak this team is. Prognosis: I see former Illini coach Lon Kruger beating his old employer handedly in round 1. UNLV beat Wisconsin, Va. Tech, Kansas St, lost a close game at Louisville so they have shown they can play with the big boys. If Illinois can revert back to how they played early in the season when they beat UNC, lost to Texas in OT, and beat Gonzaga, they may be able to win a game before they blown out by another former guy they employed : Bill Self. Unfortunately for the Illini, I do not see them getting past UNLV.
Penn State played phenomenally this weekend, beat IU in a close game, beat Wisconsin in the most boring game ever played, hammered MSU, played OSU as well as they could have in defeat on Sunday. This group of seniors knew what they had to do and made it happen. How they will fare in the tourney will be interesting. They got a decent draw with Temple in the first round. Temple had a great season beating up on the A-10, and beating Georgetown in the non-conference and losing at Nova by 4 when Nova was actually playing well. Penn State is getting hot at the right time and they are group of seniors who have done well in tournament play as the showed winning the NIT title in 2009. Unfortunately, if they are able to get by Temple, they run into a really good San Diego State team that only lost two games all year. SDSU is built for tournament play with great guard play and size down low. Prognosis : Penn State loses a nail biter to Temple in the first round in a game that could go either way.....if they can squeak by, they get blown out SDSU.
Michigan State won the game they needed to when they beat Purdue on Friday and they played like they knew they were in after they won that game because they got horribly outplayed in the second half of that game by Penn State. Now this is a team that has final 4 parts and while they have been through a lot this year dealing with injuries and losing Luscious, they are built to make a run with players like Lucas and Green leading the way, not to mention Durrell Summers who has the most talent on the team in my opinion. This is not a terrible draw for the Spartans by any means, UCLA played in a weak Pac-10 all year and I think we could see MSU get by them quite easily. Then they would move on to play the weakest 2 seed in the field in Florida. I think Michigan State is poised to make a run to the Elite Eight. This is Tom Izzo time and all this guy does is go to Final 4's. Prognosis : I like MSU to get by UCLA and Florida and who ever they play in the Sweet 16 whether it is BYU or St. Johns. I'll take MSU to get the the Elite Eight that would set them up to play either Pitt or Wisco in my opinion. Unfortunately, their run ends in the Elite Eight, but not a bad run for that group of seniors in East Lansing.
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