It’s March Madness and this is the most the important time of the year if you are a college basketball fan-- which I am. So here are a few predictions that I have for this years “Big Dance.” Specifically ones for my school, The Seton Hall Pirates, who will be taking on the North Carolina State Wolfpack in a #8 (SHU) seed vs a #9 (NC State) seed with the winners almost certainly taking on the Kansas Jayhawks. Despite me being a Seton Hall fan, I’m honestly quite nervous for the Pirates in this game. To put in bluntly, NC State is good, despite having the same record as the Pirates (20-11), the Wolfpack has been more impressive to finish out this season, finishing 8-4 compared to the Pirates’ 6-6. An in depth look shows that NC State has a better record against top-25 teams this year (4-4 for NC State compared to 1-5 for the Pirates). As well, Seton Hall’s star big man, Angel Delgado, will have an incredibly difficult match-up against NC State’s star big man Omer Yurtseven. Yurtseven, the true seven-foot, Turk, who has turned himself into a legitimate NBA prospect over the course of the year and can cause massive problems in the paint for a Pirates team who have struggled with floor spacing throughout the season. In this game the Pirates will need to slow down Wolfpack as coach Kevin Keatts has gotten his team to play at an incredibly high tempo with a combination of a smothering defense that could combine to cause a lot of problems for a Pirates team who have struggled with depth as well as turnovers. For the Pirates to advance in the tournament in this year they’ll need some help in a few aspects, most importantly the Pirates will need star sharpshooter Myles Powell to snap out of his recent 3-point struggles. The Pirates will need to do a better job with floor spacing against the Wolfpack, as well they’ll need help from their bench to keep the starting 5 well rested.
If the Pirates play to the best of their ability they should be able to see off the NC State Wolfpack, however, they’ll then run into a juggernaut of a #1 seed, in the Kansas Jayhawks.
Fresh off of another season of domination, as well as another conference championship, the Jayhawks have come into their own at the end of this season. Led by a deadly backcourt of Devonte' Graham, Malik Newman and Svi Mykhailiuk the Jayhawks play an up tempo style and definitely have the talent to make a run into late march. That being said, The Jayhawks love to shoot the three, and despite that being a contributing factor to their success this year, that can also be dangerous, especially when they struggle to hit shots like we’ve seen several times this year.
This is something for the Pirates to key into when/if they meet the Jayhawks in the round of 32. If the Pirates can play good defense and continuously run the Jayhawks off the three point line and continually contest long range jumpers, that could spell out major issues for Kansas. This will also offer up another intense matchup of big men as Angel Delgado would face Udoka Azubuike.
Azubuike is currently not expected to play in the Jayhawks matchup against Penn, and coach Bill Self has already stated that he’s still not 100% healthy after an MCL injury he suffered during practice about a week ago. However, if he gets healthy and can get back into the lineup, he can be a big addition to a Jayhawks team, as the 7 foot Nigerian has been averaging 13 points and 7 rebounds a game.
In what should be an intense matchup, Angel Delgado will have to play extremely physical game against the larger Azubuike as they will be battling in the post and for rebounds all game long. In the end however, this will be an extremely difficult matchup for the Pirates and they will need to play smart and efficiently or risk a possible blowout to the team who most people would consider to be better. This is March, however, and everyone knows, anything can happen in March.
