Selection Sunday predictions

The official NCAA tournament brackets are just a few hours away, but there's still time to make some quick predictions.

First of all, I would be very surprised if Villanova is not a 3-seed in Philadelphia for the Thursday-Saturday games at the Wachovia Center. It's looking very likely the 'Cats will be sent to South Philadelphia to play a 14-seed on Thursday.

My wild guess for Villanova's first-round opponent? East Tennessee State.

Louisville, Pittsburgh, North Carolina, and Memphis look pretty solid as the one-seeds. Duke, Connecticut, Michigan State, and Oklahoma should be the two seeds. If any of those teams could swap places, it would be UConn and Memphis, but with 25 straight wins and an absolute demolition of the C-USA, it would be unfair to the Tigers to leave them off the top line.

In the Big East, I have Syracuse as a solid #4, Marquette as a weak #6, and West Virginia as a solid #6. Providence heads to the NIT as a 2-seed, a victim of a brutal Big East schedule and a tight bubble due to mediocrity in the Big Ten and the SEC.

I have Penn State out. San Diego State in. Maryland in. St. Mary's out. (That cheap tactic of scheduling a cupcake after the conference tournament cannot be rewarded!) Arizona gets in, and its streak of tournament appearances survives one more year. Minnesota? Sorry Tubby. The Gophers are out despite his excellent coaching job turning that team around. Wisconsin is in, and is the safest of all the teams listed in this paragraph.

I think Creighton gets in as the very last team, as long as Tennessee holds off Mississippi St. this afternoon in the SEC final.

If I were in charge of the committee, Davidson would be in on the strength of a recovered Stephen Curry alone. But all signs point to Davidson heading to the NIT, where Curry will have one more chance to perform his magic in Madison Square Garden before heading to the NBA. 

We'll see how I did in a few hours.

What are your bracket predictions?