Quote Originally Posted by unclejohn View Post
That argument is made every year, and it has been disproved. The same year that Marquette and MSU met, the mock selection committee of sportswriters and the like put together their own bracket, and had them meeting in the second round. That mock bracket was done earlier in the season, when both Marquette and MSU were playing better, and I think the mock committee had them as a 3 and a 6 or something, both winning their first games and meeting in the second round. The reporters on the mock committee mentioned that match-up of one of those that fans would notice, but pointed out that nobody thought of it when they were putting the brackets together. As a matter of fact, nobody even noticed until they saw the whole bracket posted after they were done. There were just too many other factors to consider. and they didn't have time to figure out clever match-ups. And that is the way it goes every year. Putting the bracket together is a really complicated task. Throwing in the additional factor of trying to create interesting stories would just make it that much more difficult. And for what? The stories are going to be there anyway. There are going to be thirty-two games in the first (now second) round. One or two of them are going to have some interesting angle, like the time UNC played Charlotte in the first round. It is also not surprising that UNC, coached by the former Kansas coach met Kansas a in the early rounds a few years back. They are both teams that regularly make the tournament, and they are bound to meet in the early rounds sooner or later. I just don't buy the story angle. The interesting thing about those mock brackets that the NCAA put together for a few years was that they looked quite a bit like the real thing. One year they did it twice with two entirely different groups of sportswriters, and the results were about the same, with perhaps one or two different teams making the tournament, and a few teams being seeded a line or two differently, but otherwise about the same.

Not to be a logic wiener here, but that doesn't mean that it has been "disproved," just less likely to have occurred.