The Matchups

As I wrote earlier, three teams with direct connections to Penn made the tournament this year. So how did their seeds turn out?

(Click here for the bracket)

Cornell received a 14 seed and will face No. 3 Missouri Friday in Boise, Idaho. It was somewhat of a surprise that the Big Red received that high of a seed considering how bad the Ivy League was this year. But at least Cornell fans should be used to the weather in Boise -- I imagine Boise as a bigger, yet equally bleak, version of Ithaca.

Temple, meanwhile, got a decent draw at No. 11, facing No. 6 Arizona State in Miami also on Friday. I was happy if for no other reason than I called them getting the 11. If they were to upset the Sun Devils, they'd face either No. 3 Syracuse or No. 14 Stephen F. Austin in the second round.

Finally, Villanova gets American. But as a No. 3 seed they get "protected" geographically. So it wasn't really that surprising that they got the Philadelphia game on Thursday. Villanova actually has a decent shot at the elite eight, if not the Final Four. No. 6 UCLA, No. 7 Texas and No. 2 Duke are the top teams in the bottom half of the East bracket with the Wildcats, but I could see Villanova matching up fairly well with all of those. And considering Pitt -- the same team that the Wildcats beat by 10 in January -- is the top seed in the region, who knows, maybe we'll have 1985 all over again. Well ok, they're not winning the national championship. But still.