Sweet 16 Tourney Special
by Chris Maynard, chris@hoops4thesoul.com
The Idea: As I’ve been getting excited about the 2008 NCAA Tournament coming up in less than two weeks, I thought I would put together a Sweet Sixteen Tournament of the last 16 NCAA Champions. That would have originally taken me back to the 1992 Duke title team.
However, since Florida repeated in 2006 and 2007, I figured that I would combine those teams into one team…thus giving me another team to add. However, since Duke won the title in 1991, it wouldn’t make sense to make that the extra team. So Duke 91 and 92 were also combined into one team, allowing me to include the awesome 1990 UNLV Runnin’ Rebels in this tournament.
So essentially, this Sweet Sixteen Tournament is of the last 18 NCAA champions, from 1990-2007. At this point, I seeded the teams from 1-16 based on my opinion of which was the strongest title team (1990 UNLV got that nod and the number-one overall seed; 1998 Kentucky was the weakest championship team in my option and got the number 16 overall seed).
You can see the rankings in the following post: A Sweet Sixteen Tournament of the Last 18 NCAA Champions. From here, the top four teams got number-one seeds for their respective regions, which were based on the old West, East, Midwest and Southeast format. 1990 UNLV was sent to the West, 1991/1992 Duke sent to the East as the Blue Devils were the number two overall seed, 2006/2007 Florida (number three overall) sent to the Midwest Regional, and 1996 Kentucky (number four overall) sent to the Southeast Regional.
With all that in mind, the winner of the West Regional will take on the winner of the Southeast Regional while the winners of the East and Midwest Regionals will also due battle in the Final Four.
The tournament starts Monday, March 10, 2008 with the halves of a West Regional game being uploaded. We’ll see how long it takes me to do a game, as it will be in a game tracker mode.
In the meantime, check out the game previews for the Sweet Sixteen Tournament.
West Regional (numbers represent region seedings and not overall tourney seedings)
#1 1990 UNLV Runnin’ Rebels (35-5) vs. #4 1998 Kentucky Wildcats (35-4)
#2 2001 Duke Blue Devils (35-4) vs. #3 1993 North Carolina Tar Heels (34-4)
Southeast Regional
#1 1996 Kentucky Wildcats (34-2) vs. #4 1995 UCLA Bruins (31-2)
#2 2000 Michigan State Spartans (32-7) vs. #3 2002 Maryland Terrapins (32-4)
Midwest Regional
#1 Florida Gators (33-6 in ‘06, 35-5 in ‘07) vs. #4 1997 Arizona Wildcats (25-9)
#2 1994 Arkansas Razorbacks (31-3) vs. #3 2004 Connecticut Huskies (33-6)
East Regional
#1 1991/1992 Duke Blue Devils (32-7 in ‘91, 34-2 in ‘92) vs. #4 2003 Syracuse Orangemen (30-5)
# 2 1999 UCONN Huskies (34-2) vs. #3 2005 North Carolina Tar Heels (33-4)
