New York Post writer Lenn Robbins was the first to put it in print, he said Illinois will cut down the nets in Indianapolis. Well there, Mr. Robbins, that’s a tough one for even the most delusional Illinois fans to agree with, but in March anything is possible. But instead of picturing “One Shining Moment” so quick, lets first dive in to the Washington D.C. region.

Did you ever play King of the Mountain as a kid? If not, it’s a game where you find a little hill, usually made of wood chips on the playground, and the goal is to get to and stay at the top of the hill. In order to get up there you need to wrestle around with other kids along the way and when you get to the top the people try and push you off. I look at the D.C. region and consider it and interesting game of King of the Mountain.

Sometimes you have to play the game with a giant, in this case UCONN. The Huskies from Storrs are favored to win the entire tournament, they have the most talent, the best point guard and a coach who has sealed the deal just two years ago. The thing about UCONN though is they have been prone to playing lazy, it becomes hard to bring your A game every night when you look at your fellow lottery pick teammates and figure somebody else will step up. So in Huskie conclusion, if UCONN plays their best basketball nobody is going to beat them but out of all the games they could slip up in during the tournament, they are all in this region.

If they take their Sweet 16 (Illinois) or Elite game lightly (Michigan State or North Carolina) they will lose and this tourney will get broken wide open.

The strangest part of the D.C. bracket is that two teams inside of it are more worthy of the 2 seed than Tennessee. The Volunteers stumbled mightily toward the end of the season and come from a weaker conference. On the other hand a lot of people are picking their Kansas-Bucknell repeat to be when Tennessee matches up against Winthrop in the first round.

One of the best second round match-ups anywhere is going to have to be the Michigan State vs. North Carolina game. These are two final four teams from the year before, and two teams with the talent to make it back if they get on a run. Michigan State has one of the strongest trios in college hoops; Mo Ager, Paul Davis and Shannon Brown give the Spartans a chance in any contest. And was there a hotter team in the nation over the last month of play than North Carolina; I’m already souped.

In less anticipated match-ups from the region, Wichita State will beat Seton Hall and UAB will beat Kentucky. That’s all, those teams are boring.

Finally the Fighting Illini’s road to Indy. I think that Illinois was given one of the easiest roads to the Sweet 16 on the board. Air Force wasn’t supposed to get in and Washington is a paper champ out of the Pac-10. Washington can shoot so Illinois will look to avoid nightmares of 2003 but barring disaster they will see the big kid on top of the hill. Illinois does not match up well against UCONN, but in all honesty nobody does any better and I think if you’re going to play UCONN, the Sweet 16 is when they are vulnerable. They have just rolled through two games and might be just trying to get to the Final Four already. Illinois has the experience and talent to upset the Huskies if they come in with too much swagger; but either way, win or lose, going up against a UCONN is the only way you want to go out of the tourney.

Ian Gold is a senior in Communications. He can be reached at [email protected].