TopDrawer weighs in

he's got a blog entry on the pairings here:
http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/RobertZiegler/

He's thinking what I'm thinking--The NCAA isn't very bright in how it seeds, but other brackets make even less sense than ours. They put rivals Texas and A&M in the same first weekend pairing,and Penn State and Ohio State, and Boston College and Connecticut together as well. Why not just accept the Conference Championship rounds that just happened last week and eliminate travel for two teams in each round of 4? If they want to save travel money, that would seem to be the easiest way. It would halve the number of trips the NCAA would need to pay for. It also makes Conference Championships meaningless and silly. All that does is move the conference RPI's towards .500.

His worst first weekend?

Santa Clara, Cal, Sac State, and Stanford all together in the first weekend-- Seems designed to weed out the Western half of the country. (meanwhile, UNC,Duke, James Madison, and UNC Greensboro isn't a bracket for the first weekend, you notice, even though the travel for those games could probably be handled on city buses.)

Actually, I think this is good. It's nice to have other schools get a first hand taste of getting screwed. It might actually lead to some reform.

Portland having to travel again isn't even news to him anymore.Ho-hum, what else is new?

How about USC going to Missouri? Texas / Texas A&M together is baffling to me. Oh well, take what you get and handle it! Portland will be ready for sure. One game at a time!