Amateur brackets gone wrong

By the time the final horn sounded in the Hoosiers' loss Thursday in San Diego, my brackets were already in trouble. \nBy Sunday night they were shredded to pieces.\nI had gone home for spring break psyched for a great week of opening round games, thinking I had a pretty good grasp on the field of 65 and a good idea who would be left standing after the initial hysteria. The amount of time I have spent this year studying teams, their records, lineups, RPIs and so on far exceeded the extent of my analyses from past years, and since I had done a relatively decent job of predicting previous tourneys, I was confident this time around.\nWell, let's just say I didn't ace this one.\nTo put it in perspective percentage-wise, I correctly picked the winner in slightly more than 58 percent of the 48 first and second round games.\nThe last time I checked, 58 percent wasn't even good enough to pass, let alone impress.\nAfter going through some initial self-doubt as to whether I actually knew anything about basketball, I was relieved to find out that a lot of other people had a rough time with their predictions as well, and I realized that the NCAA tournament is one of the most unpredictable events in sports.\nIt wasn't that I didn't pick any upsets; I did. But most of the upsets I picked never materialized, while several others did.\nThe South and West regions killed me. In the South, I did terribly. I really wanted to pick Gonzaga and Indiana State to win because I like them, but I couldn't convince myself that they could beat Virginia and Oklahoma. In a past column in fact, I predicted Gonzaga to go the Sweet 16 for the third consecutive year, but after finding out who they played in the first round I changed my mind. Should have gone with the first instinct.\nAnd seriously, what is the deal with Penn State and Temple? I'm having a hard time believing that a team that lost at home to Northwestern and another team that lost seven straight at one point actually have a shot at going to the Elite Eight. The only one of my Final Four picks to bite the dust thus far, Florida, fell to Temple Sunday. But I do have a semi-excuse for that one -- I made the selection before news broke that Gator forward Brent Wright would miss the entire tournament.\nI did even worse out West. I only picked four games correctly -- Stanford and Maryland winning two games each. My upset special for that bracket, 12th-seeded BYU, lost by a mere 25 points. IU and Iowa State really let me down -- I had them both in the Sweet 16. I think the only person in the whole country to pick Hampton over the second-seeded Cyclones was Hampton coach Steve Merfeld's mom.\nIf the tournament only consisted of the Midwest regional, I would have been a perfect 12 for 12 so far. But then again, the only "upsets" in the Midwest were (10) Butler over (7) Wake Forest and (9) Charlotte over (8) Tennessee, so that's not exactly something to call home about, or even write in a column about.\nIt would have been easy for me to have come back and written that I picked almost all of the right upsets and that my bracket was still intact. After all, the only people who knew all of my picks were my brother and a few friends. But the best thing about the tournament is that it's not over yet. So I still have time to tape together my torn-up bracket from the trash can and see if I can't salvage anything. Better yet, I'll just start fresh. Of the 16 schools still dancing, here's how I see everything shaking out:\nEast\nDuke beats UCLA; Kentucky beats USC; Duke beats Kentucky\nWest\nStanford beats Cincinnati; Georgetown beats Maryland; Stanford beats Georgetown\nMidwest\nKansas beats Illinois; Arizona beats Ole Miss; Arizona beats Kansas\nSouth\nMichigan State beats Gonzaga (but it's close); Temple beats Penn State; Michigan State beats Temple\nFinal Four\nDuke beats Stanford; Arizona beats Michigan State; Duke beats Arizona