March Madness. The time of year when brackets are flowing and money exchanges hands from friend to friend and gambler to bookie. With people placing bets, filling out bracket after bracket for pool after pool, trying to claim winner to a perfect bracket.

Tournament time is a great time of year when the culmination of the regular season and conference championship tournaments pay off for the good and sometimes lucky teams, and not so much for others.

The conference championships were some of the best to date. A lot of the games were exciting and down to the last shot, or went into overtime.

I can just imagine what the NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball Championships are going to hold for the fans.

Beside the stupid region names, the only real issue is that the NCAA is not getting all of the right teams in the tournament. And the teams that make the field sometimes get special treatment.

The head of the committee who selects the teams invited to the tournament is Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith. Smith’s term as head of the committee expires in September.

The committee selected OSU as the No. 1 overall seed and what appears as one of the easiest routes to the Final Four.

San Diego State has lost only two games all season and finished the Mountain West Conference Championship Tournament on top, beating the only team to beat them this year, BYU.

The win gave the Aztecs 32 wins this season, the same as OSU, but only a No. 2 seed in the tournament.

SDSU should have been given the No. 1 seed in the West region, Duke given the No. 1 seed in the Southeast region and Connecticut and Texas bumped up, respectively.

You do the math and tell me something isn’t a little bit odd about those situations.

Another weird happening is, Virginia Tech (21-11, 9-7 ACC) missing the tournament four years in a row, and this year the Hokies upset another No. 1 seed the Duke Blue Devils earlier this year. The Hokies are getting hosed and they should be in the NCAA tournament.

Other than that mess, the first two days should go as expected with higher seeds winning out. Some minor upsets of course, but nothing too crazy like number ones going down.

The third round gets a bit more interesting, with Duke being ousted, but again, nothing too out of the ordinary.

Now in the Sweet Sixteen, that’s where I have things getting a bit dicey for the higher seeds.

In the Sweet Sixteen:

East: No. 2 North Carolina losing to No. 3 Syracuse

West: No. 2 San Diego State losing to No. 3 Connecticut

Southeast: No. 6 St. John’s losing to No. 10 Michigan State

Southeast: No. 1 Pittsburgh losing to No. 5 Kansas State

Southwest: No. 2 Notre Dame losing to No. 3 Purdue

In the Elite Eight:

East: No. 1 Ohio State losing to No. 3 Syracuse

West: No. 3 Connecticut beating No. 4 Texas

Southeast: No. 10 Michigan State beating No. 5 Kansas State

Southwest: No. 1 Kansas beating No. 3 Purdue

In the Final Four, a rematch of a Big East rivalry pits UConn against Syracuse and puts the Huskies into the title game and on the other side, Kansas beats MSU to advance the Jayhawks into the title game.

In the end, Kemba Walker and the UConn Huskies are to offensively gifted for the Jayhawks and get to cut down the nets.