Those are my picks for Saturday. I’d like to go with George Mason, but… I think Florida combines an organized, multiple-option offense that’s difficult to defend, with disciplined, poised, play, and freakish athletes. I don’t think they’ve played a team yet with that kind of combination. Wichita State lacked the freakish athletes. UConn and Michigan State lacked the organized, disciplined play. UNC lacked experience, poise, and focus.

It wouldn’t shock me if Mason won, though… they are that good. I could envision them really slowing the game down, feeding the post, getting Noah and Horford in foul trouble and taking their chances with some big-balls plays down the stretch. That’s going to be hard to execute, though.

It’s not that I don’t think Mason is good, I just think Florida’s better. I feel bad about it… I do want them to win. I’ll be rooting for them. I just don’t think it’ll happen.

And by the way, it would be a real nice change of pace for a team to win a tournament, and then take the microphone and say, “Hey, no one thought we could do it, no one believed in us,” and have it not be complete horseshit. I don’t think that’s happened since the 2004 NBA Finals.

On the other side, I like LSU. And again, it’s not because I think there’s anything particularly wrong with UCLA, but LSU has just mowed through everyone, teams who play a variety of styles. They’re peaking at the right time, they’re getting good decision-making from their guards, and their post players are just buck nasty. I think they’re beating UCLA by 10 or more. I like LSU on Monday night, too.

You?

Jim Boeheim and a few other coaches have gone on record as saying that they’d like to see the NCAA tournament expand the field. The argument is that there are more teams now, and in fact, more good teams, which is something I agree with. I still don’t know that it makes it necessary to have more than 64 teams in a tournament to crown a national championship, but it’s true… the mid-majors have really closed the gap on the big guys. Now, I’m not sure if these proposals are designed to get more Hofstras into the tournament, or more Michigans… but it sounds nice in theory.

I don’t think it’s something that’s really likely to happen, but the movement appears to be gathering steam. If it does happen, I a few requests:

1) If there are more play-in games, they should make every effort to make them seem like a real tournament game. I forget who Monmouth played in the play-in game this year, but that team, who won a conference tournament, did not get the same attention that the other teams in the tournament got… they got a Tuesday night game in Dayton. Congratulations. I don’t think it would be fair to make these conference tournament winners play in tournament games that aren’t really tournament games. In fact…

2) The play-in games shouldn’t always be just winners of the small conference tournaments. I’d rather see teams like Cincinnati or Florida State, big schools who didn’t quite have the chops to get in, duking it out for a spot. I think winning a conference tournament or regular season title, no matter how sucky the conference, is a bigger deal than going .500 in the ACC. I’d rather see the conference winners rewarded.

And 3) Please don’t fuck with my bracket pool. If you’re still announcing the teams on Sunday evening, then you can’t start having 6 or 8 games on Tuesday. That doesn’t give me enough time to organize a completely legal, not-for-profit tournament pool.

A bunch of old guys that I’d like to hang out with pulled off a pretty sweet little trick… in 1963, some guys were sitting around in a bar came up with the idea of founding a fake institution of higher learning. They called it “Maguire University” and they used it to hoodwink the NCAA into giving them free Final Four tickets.

I don’t know exactly they went about it, but they must have just called the NCAA and said, “Hey, we have a school,” and the NCAA said, “OK, your tickets are on the way,” because really, all they had was their idea.  There was no team, no school, no nothing.  And it worked.  The NCAA send them Final Four tickets for two years. Air Force even called them up once and asked to schedule a game against them.

This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.  It ended when some Chicago columnist eventually broke their story in the Chicago Tribune, and that was the end of it. But they’ve still found a way to attend each of the last 44 Final Fours, which is oustanding. These men are heroes.

These are pulled from a Washington Post article today that makes George Mason seem like about the most likable team in college basketball history. It’s a nice article by Mike Wise, and gives you a look at the honest, goofy, nature of this team and their head coach.

• Coach Jim Larranaga does not use profanity.

• Larranaga’s salary is 1/9th of Billy Donovan’s.

• Larranaga’s first assistant coaches lived in his basement.

• A quote from freshman Sammy Hernandez, who loves Scarface: “First, you get the money. Then, you get the Final Four. Then, you get the woman.”

• Jai Lewis is nicknamed “Giggles.”

And here’s another good one from Adrian Wojnarowski at ESPN.com. It’s a little bit more about how Mason got to where they are, the kind of people they were looking for, and how they’ve gone about things. Both quality reads.