Fansided

2015 NCAA Tournament: East Region Capsule

By Mike Marteny

facebooktwitterreddit

The brackets are unveiled! Let the games begin!

More from College Basketball Odds

For those of you that do the bracket games, I will unveil all of my picks by Wednesday night. For those of you that play the round by round games, I will also put my picks out there after every round as well. There will be something for everyone!

In the preview, I will give you a favorite, and dark horse team, which would be a four seed or higher than could win the region. A team to watch for, overseeded and underseeded teams, and of course, a double digit seed most likely to win one or more games.

We move on to the East Region, which could look like a warzone by the end of the first weekend. There are some good teams lurking here.

Favorite: Villanova is the best seed, but I honestly think that Virginia is the favorite. That said, I could see BOTH of them getting bounced in the first weekend.

Watch out for: Oklahoma. They are not a deep team, but they might have the best starting five in the country. They shoot well, they rebound well, and they hustle. They also have what looks like an easy road to the regional semifinals compared to the other higher seeds in here.

Dark Horse: Northern Iowa. They don’t get a lot of attention in the Missouri Valley conference, but this is a very good team. They shoot well, and they don’t make mistakes. You are going to have to earn a win to beat them. Even their bigs can shoot, which causes matchup problems.

Begging To Be Upset: Virginia. They like to slow games down to a crawl and beat on you. That won’t work if they get Michigan State in the second round.

Overseeded: Villanova. With all due respect to the Wildcats, I would have given a one seed to Arizona or Virginia for their overall body of work. Their signature out of conference win was over Virginia Commonwealth, and the Big East is not as good as the ACC or even the Pac 12.

Underseeded: There are a couple, but Michigan State is the most glaring one. They made the Big Ten tournament final, so they are playing well right now. You never want to play Tom Izzo in March. The Spartans could go a long, long way in this one. This is likely the weakest region at the top, but LSU and Michigan State are dangerous as middle seeds.

Cinderella: UC-Irvine. Louisville is not a good perimeter team, and the Anteaters are really good shooters. They also have the size to not get pushed around inside. If they can beat Louisville, they match up very well with Northern Iowa.

Come back for the South regional capsule, the picks for the First Four, and of course, the bracket picks!

Next: Meet The 12-16 Seeds

More from FanSided