Fiasco time: It’ll be Louisville over Miami

The 26th edition of Bradley’s Bracket Fiasco begins with a declaration: Of the dozen teams that could advance to the Georgia Dome, two stand above the rest. Louisville and Miami will meet April 8 for the national championship, and their collision will make for one of the finest NCAA title games ever played.

The rest is a jumble. For example: Kansas is a good team that got a lousy draw. If you’re the Jayhawks, do you really want to see small but sweet-shooting North Carolina, which happens to be coached by a man who once worked in Lawrence, before the first weekend is done?

Kansas is better than New Mexico, but the Lobos were graced with the No. 3 seed in a region where Nos. 1 and 2 (Gonzaga and Ohio State, respectively) are suspect. And the team that everyone expected would be playing its regional in Indianapolis – that’d be Indiana, the preseason No. 1 – got shipped to the East, and the Hoosiers are no lock to win even two games there.

A few words about the Fiasco: Enter online for the chance to win a $1,000 Visa gift card from our sponsor Comcast and the traditional BBF champion’s Final Four sweatshirt/hoodie from yours truly. (And you’re automatically entered in Upickem’s national contest, first prize for which is $1 million.) We are, it should be noted, doing our contest differently this time: For 25 years the aim was to pick the Final Four; this time we’re going the more traditional route of crowning our champ on the strength of who picks the most games correctly.

Full disclosure: I’m terrible at the contest I founded back in 1988 for the simple reason that I pick a slew of upsets, and upsets are, by definition, unpredictable. So why am I picking a bunch of upsets again? Two reasons: First, I’m stupid; second, the line between the haves and have-nots in college basketball has eroded to hairline proportions, and there aren’t many no-chance games in any round of the Big Dance anymore.

Which is why South Dakota State will last longer than Kansas. Which is why Wichita State will shock the team ranked No. 1 in the land. Which is why the preseason No. 1 will be ousted by one of the season’s biggest underachievers. Which is why VCU, a giant among upsetters, will itself be undone.

Kansas has a long history of being undressed in its second game (think UTEP in 1992, Rhode Island in 1998 and Northern Iowa in 2010), and the team that will do it this time is a team that’s almost never an underdog and will revel in its role. North Carolina re-invented itself by going with a four-guard lineup and came very close to winning the ACC tournament. Look for the Heels to make the Elite Eight, eliminating South Dakota State, which will have upset Michigan and then VCU, to get there.

Tubby Smith has taken three schools to the Sweet 16 – Tulsa, Georgia and Kentucky – and he’ll make it a fourth time with Minnesota. The Gophers will take down UCLA, which is missing the injured Jordan Adams, and Florida, which is missing the innate capacity to win a tough game, before losing to Georgetown in the South final.

The East will belong to Miami, which deserved a No. 1 seed but should be gleeful over this particular No. 2. The region’s No. 3 is Marquette, which will fall to Davidson. The No. 4 is Syracuse, which will lose to Montana. The No. 1 is Indiana, which will lose to N.C. State.

The Wolfpack were the preseason choice to win the ACC, and they finished fifth. That doesn’t, however, mean they’re incapable of beating somebody of substance, especially when that somebody – meaning Indiana – plays the same sort of game. Like N.C. State, the Hoosiers are better at scoring than defending, and the ACC, for a change, has been underrated this season. The Big Ten, by way of contrast, was vastly overblown. Two ACC teams will meet in the Elite Eight, with Miami beating the Wolfpack for a third time.

New Mexico will win the West. Steve Alford and his assistant Craig Neal have built a terrific program that is only now receiving its national due. The Lobos will beat Ohio State in the Sweet 16 and Wisconsin in the Elite Eight. (One by one the Big Tenners fall.) And what of Gonzaga? Gone-zaga at the hands of Wichita State.

That leaves the Midwest, the best regional by far. The Sweet 16 matchup between Duke and Michigan State will be delicious – the Devils will prevail with speed trumping heft – and a Louisville-Duke Elite Eight match will raise memories of another regional final that featured teams coached by Mike Krzyzewski and Rick Pitino. This time Pitino will guard the inbounds pass. This time his team will win.