Is there anyone that can stop Florida from marching to San Antonio and the Final Four?
Sick of hard-hitting analysis of the 2025 NCAA Tournament? Up to your eyeballs in expert picks chock-full of astute takes on players to watch and budding upsets?
Fear not, friends: your pals at Anonymous Eagle are here to inject some half-baked, homespun “insight” into the proceedings, with our (mostly) annual region-by-region tour, as we go Anonymously Through the Brackets.
For each region, we’ll give you our patented Anonymous Eagle Half-Arsed Analysis with: a gutless pick to win the region; a sleeper regional champ; a CRUSH YOUR MAN upset special; a player/team we’d pay to watch; a player most likely to carry his team singlehandedly to the Sweet 16; and the best player in the region that you’ve never heard of before.
Let’s see what Bracketville has in store when we make our way out west………
GUTLESS WONDER Pick To Win The Region
Your pick here depends on how you want to see a team win. Do you want to pick KenPom.com’s most efficient offense in the country, or do you want KenPom’s most efficient defense?
The answer is you want the offense because scoring is fun. On top of that, Florida is the #10 defense to go with their potent offense, while St. John’s matches their stifling defense with….. yeah, the #65 offense. Backing the Johnnies is a risk that all of a sudden they won’t be able to do anything on offense. Won’t have that problem with Florida, so we’re taking the Gators here.
CHEX BOLD PARTY MIX Bold Pick To Win The Region
If you wrote off Maryland right about the time that they lost to Oregon on a swing to the Pacific Northwest to fall to 1-3 in Big Ten play….. or when they lost in overtime to Northwestern 11 days later to fall to 3-4 in the conference and 13-5 overall…… well, it’s time to apologize to Kevin Willard and the Terrapins. They’re 12-3 since then, and the three losses are by a combined seven points, including to Michigan by one in the Big Ten semifinals. They’ve been playing like a top 10 team in that time frame, but the full picture of their season made them a 4 seed here. If they keep hitting threes and keep getting a big interior presence from both Derik Queen & Julian Reese, well, don’t be surprised to see the Terrapins cutting a net in San Francisco.
CRUSH YOUR MAN Upset Special
As Gary Parrish pointed out on Sunday’s episode of the Eye on College basketball podcast, Memphis guard Tyrese Hunter spent the AAC title game on Sunday on the bench in a walking boot. That’s a bad sign for the #5 seeded Tigers…. made worse by the fact that KenPom.com has #12 Colorado State favored, 74-73, in this 5/12 matchup.
No, it’s not a wagering line upset, but it is a seeding upset, and that’s what you need to win your pool. Plus: This isn’t the obvious upset pick in this region. That honor goes to 30-3 Drake as the #11 seed going against #6 Missouri. Do you want to be in on the upset pick that everyone’s taking and thus causing a karma backlash and a Mizzou victory, or do you want to take the easy win of an already favored team going up against the better seeded team with an banged up point guard?
Player I’d Pay To Watch
Sometimes you want to make sure you get value for your dollar. If you pay to watch Drake junior Bennett Stirtz, you’re probably going to get your money’s worth. It’s not because the 6’4” guard from Missouri is averaging a Missouri Valley best 19.1 points or leading the MVC in steals at 2.2 per game. It’s not because he leads Drake in assists after transferring over with new head coach Ben McCollum from D2 Northwest Missouri State.
It’s because Bennett Stirtz is averaging 39.3 minutes per game. Stirtz has been on the bench for just one minute in Drake’s last six games, which includes two overtime victories. He has gone the distance in 23 of Drake’s games this season, and on top of the fact that you are going to get as much Bennett Stirtz as there is minutes in a game most likely speaking, he’s also AWESOME. Stirtz has 18 KenPom.com Game MVP honors this season, which is tied for the second most in the country this season.
The Chiropractor Special: aka Who Can Put The Team On His Back?
I’m writing for Marquette fans mostly here, so I presume that you’re going to get a massive eye twitch when I just mention UConn’s Solo Ball here.
When Solo Ball goes full Triple Ball, he is one of the scariest players in the country. MU fans saw that up close and personal when he went 7-for-9 from long range in the Huskies’ 77-69 victory in Milwaukee. That was the game when UConn turned the ball over twenty-five times so let’s be clear about it: If Solo Ball is “merely” 4-for-9 in that game, a 44% outing, something you’d take every day and twice on Thursdays, if Ball was merely great and not unconscious, UConn loses.
Proof of concept that Ball can single handedly strap up his team and drag them to a win, no matter what else is happening on the court.
Best Guy You’ve Never Heard Of
It’s a little bit of a risk, but there are worse guys to trust in the NCAA tournament than a small-ish guard who knows how to put his head down, go to the rim, and at least draw a foul.
That’s what we’re looking at with UNC Wilmington’s Donovan Newby, who measures up at 6’1” and 185 pounds. He’s absurdly efficient as a ballplayer, partly because he rarely turns it over and partly because he’s drawing 4.6 fouls per 40 minutes of action this season. That has him in the top 350 in the country there, and that’s a problem because Newby shoots 89% from the charity stripe.
Newby can also shoot it enough from the outside to make you respect his shot, and the combination of getting to the rack and shooting it from long range is probably helping him boost those assist numbers up, at least in terms of rate.
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