Ncaa Sweet 16

UC to play two vs. Marquette, St. John's, 'Nova

Marquette, St. John's and Villanova are the home-and-away three opponents from the University of Cincinnati basketball schedule for Big East Conference men for the coming season.

All three have played in the NCAA tournament last season, with the advancement of Marquette Sweet 16.

UC split last season with St. John, winning on the road and lose at home. The Bearcats beat Marquette in Milwaukee and lost to Villanova. They are 1-5 against the Villanova since joining the Big East, with their victory coming Jan. 12, 2008 at Fifth Third Arena.

Home-and-away opponents last season were unified St. John's, Georgetown and DePaul. The Bearcats went 5-1 against them.

UC's other home Big East opponents this season will be DePaul, Louisville, Notre Dame, Providence, Seton Hall and Syracuse.

It's the second straight season the Bearcats will play Louisville at Fifth Third Arena, which means they will have to wait another year to play in the Cardinals' KFC Yum! Center, which opened last year.

UC's remaining league road games will be against defending national champion Connecticut, Georgetown, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, South Florida and West Virginia.

UC is 0-4 against Pittsburgh in the Petersen Events Center, where it has lost by an average margin of 13.5 points. The Bearcats lost their past three games to USF in the Sun Dome in Tampa, Fla.

Dates and television assignments for Big East games will be released later this summer.

In addition to the Big East schedule, UC will play at Georgia in the Big East/SEC Challenge on Dec. 2. The Bearcats also will play non-league road games at Xavier and Wright State (Dec. 1), in addition to home games against Miami University and Marshall (Nov. 25) and a game at U.S. Bank Arena against Oklahoma.

Fantastical NCAA/Pro Showdown (Preview & Sweet 16) | TornBySports.com

What if the NBA has been put in place to keep players united in terms of where they come from before joining the league? Duke University players joined the "Duke Professional Team." Ballers who are not foreign in American universities joined the "Team business abroad." And so on. In this fantasy world, it would be for each of these teams all better times and similar alignments which would benefit from a confrontation of the best of the best?(I do not think my alma mater the University of North Texas would have a chance ...)

After going through the big names, a look, for each university in the U.S. I came with 14 NCAA programs that could put together a team good enough to compete in this type of place (there Obviously some lists that are a cut or two above the rest, but we laugh! right?). Adding a high school team and a foreign team, which goes down to 16 lists. Perfect for a voting system tournament style to determine a Best "the best!”

In selecting players for the teams, I tried to stick to a true NBA format in that each team needed a player that fulfilled the five normal starting positions (PG, SG, SF, PF, C) as well as a bench player that could give the starter a rest AND be able to play his position well.  This created issues with some teams.  For example, the high school team didn’t even have one true point guard that was worth putting on a roster like this (what a disappointment Sebastian Telfair turned out to be), and the Foreign players are really tall… REALLY tall, creating an issue with their backup guard situation.  Despite these difficulties I did my best to create the rosters as a coach really would, thinking about game situations.  I also stuck to only 10 players for each roster, because in a tournament, no team really uses all 12 players.

How is this going to work exactly?  I am going to post matches and have the readership of TBS vote on who they think will win.  Each round will have all matches in one post (this column will include the first round, the sweet sixteen), so this will take a total of 4 columns over the course of 3 weeks to decide a winner.

To vote on which team you think you win, post a comment thread, including your first-round pick, and I count the votes in the morning I sit down to write the column for round 2!

I present here Round # 1: Sweet Sixteen! Seeds are not a determination that I think would win every game, but a numerical calculation based on an arbitrary formula that I took 2 minutes to develop.

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