On ESPN's Around the Horn yesterday, the sports writers–at least three of the four–were all complaining about Kansas' road to the Final Four in the Midwest Region. They said that Kansas has the toughest road of anybody and said that's ridiculous since they are the number one overall seed in the tournament. I agree with them to an extent. After an easy first round game, Kansas will face a decent UNLV team, whom they should beat, but then faces Michigan State or Maryland. If they win that they would probably face the Georgetown-Ohio State winner, and both those teams are almost top-seeded teams; Ohio State was very close to getting a number one seed. Kansas should be good enough to emerge, but Ohio State is probably the best if not the best–besides West Virginia–number two seed in the tourney.
The writers compared Kansas's draw to Duke's, the number three one seed. After a cupcake first game, Duke has Louisville, a good team if they can beat Cal, another good team, maybe Texas A&M or Purdue next (though a lot of people are picking Purdue to lost to Sienna in the first round; I'm not one of them) and then face either Baylor or Nova in the round of eight.
They were also mad that Duke was seeded ahead of Syracuse. I don't think there's too much of a problem with the draws for all number one teams. I think they could lose because there are a lot of quality teams out there, and all have tough roads to reach Indianapolis April 3.
Overall the bracket is fine. Kansas may have a tougher road than Duke, Kentucky and Syracuse, but they're all tough in March except for the first round games for the number one seeds. Those are virtual guarantees. No one seed has lost to a 16th seed ever. Kansas has Lehigh, 'Cuse has Vermont, Kentucky has East Tennessee State and Duke plays the winner of the play in game between Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Winthrop. So they'll get to the second round. Duke may actually have the hardest second round game as they will play the winner of Louisville-California. Those are two pretty quality teams.
So nobody's road is easy. I've got Kansas, Duke and Kentucky making it through to the Final Four and Syracuse losing to Kansas State in the Elite Eight. We'll see.