Marcus’ NCAA Basketball Tournament Methodology: Battle of the Fiercest Team Names

Nothing beats a Blue Devil. (It's like Rock)

This year I have chosen my bracket using a system that came to me in a dream and I have invested a lot of confidence in.  Basically it works like this: In each given matchup the higher seed will be granted the win unless the difference between the two seeds is equal to or less than 3 in which case they do battle (i.e. first round matchups of 7v10 and 8v9 and so on).  A battle consists of taking the team name of both schools and deciding if the two animals or whatever it may be were to fight then which one would likely win.  Here’s how it shaped up.

My Bracket (Click to Expand):

One of the more easy matchups to judge was the ironic case of when the Wildcats (Kentucky) killed the Mountaineers (West Virginia) in the second round.  However numerous matchups were not so simple, for example in the cases of mythological creatures.  Such a situation came into play in the second round when Connecticut played Cincinnati.  Don’t get me wrong Huskies are pretty tough but they are no match for a Bearcat.  Half Bear half Cat? I had to give that one to Cincinnati.  Other tough teams to judge came with the likes of Illinois who lay claim to the Illini, now I don’t know what Illini are but apparently they’re Fighting in this case so they must be decent in a battle right?  And then there was Syracuse.  For those of you unfamiliar with the team name of Syracuse it is Orange.  Not the Orange Tigers, not the Orange Falcons, just the color Orange.  Try to decide who wins in a matchup between a band of Musketeers (Xavier) and the color Orange (Syracuse).

Of course this system brought upon other difficult judgements to make such as how does a Red Storm (St. John’s) do battle with Cougars (BYU), as was the case in a second round matchup I had.  For this scenario I had to go with Mother Nature, although it is difficult to decide what exactly a Red Storm might be I figured it would be impossible for Cougars to kill it whereas this mythical Red Storm could certainly affect the natural environment of a Cougar.  Unfortunately in this case my hands were tied for literally the remainder of the games where the Red Storm would continue to destroy a bevy of animals and put the 6 seed St. John’s in the National Championship game where finally a force greater than them in the Duke Blue Devils would conquer.

As a closing note I will propose a question to anyone with an answer.  What the hell is an Aggie?

More Strategies from First Off The Bench:

Matt’s NCAA Basketball Tournament Methodology: The Bitter Bracket

Kai’s NCAA Basketball Tournament Methodology: Method? We were supposed to have a method?

David’s NCAA Basketball Tournament Methodology: SRS and Win Shares