Editor's Note: Dick Weiss, a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame, has covered college sports in Philadelphia and New York for more than 40 years. He will be providing regular commentary for the American Athletic Conference during the 2013-14 season.
I'm going to go out on a limb and pick the Louisville men and the Connecticut women to repeat as national champions.
Why not?
The two American Athletic Conference tournament champions are playing as well as anyone in the country heading into the NCAA tournament.
UConn has built a dynasty in the women's game, winning 18 Big East titles, eight national championships and setting an NCAA record with 89 straight victories from the start of the 2008 season through Dec. 30, 2011. The Huskies defeated Louisville, 72-52, to win the inaugural American Championship in Uncasville, Conn.
And Naismith Hall of Fame coach Geno Auriemma, whose team is 34-0, has more than enough talent to finish unbeaten for a fifth time.
It doesn't matter who they play, where they play. No one has come close to beating the top-ranked Huskies this season. UConn has dominated The American, winning its first 18 league games by a whopping 37.5 points and defeating third-ranked Louisville 72-52 in the tournament final. This is the sixth time the Huskies have entered the tournament with an unblemished record.
UConn has produced a litany of great players under Auriemma-- Maya Moore, Nykesha Sales, Sue Bird, Rebecca Lobo and of course Diana Taurasi, whom Auriemma referred to as "our Michael Jordan" after she led the Huskies to three straight national titles.
Breanna Stewart, a 6-4 sophomore from Syracuse who was a huge star on USA Basketball's U17 and U19 gold medal teams, is the latest superstar to step off Auriemma's never-ending assembly line. Stewart was selected MVP of the NCAA Final Four as a freshman when the Huskies defeated Louisville, 93-60, in New Orleans and was the 2014 American Athletic Conference Player of the Year. She scored 20 points, grabbed nine rebounds, and had six assists and four blocks against the Cardinals in the American final. She is the best young player on the planet and was an easy choice for tournament MVP.
"It's going to take 40 minutes of very, very good basketball in order for anybody to beat them," Louisville coach Jeff Walz said of the Huskies. "That's one thing I've been preaching to our players the entire time. You can't play for 20, can't play for 30. It takes 40 minutes of basketball."
Bria Hartley added 16 points and Stefanie Dolson had 10 points and 16 rebounds, her 12th double-double of the season. The Huskies have won 40 straight games — the third-longest streak in school history. It was the third straight game that UConn put a team away by the end of the first half in the tournament.
"You have a goal on Oct. 15 when you start and the whole process is about that. New league, new coaches, new venue that was all exciting for us," Auriemma said. "I don't know how many conference championships The American is going to host in their lifetime, but we won the first one and there's something special about that."
UConn has now beat Louisville 16 straight times.
The Louisville men, who are 29-5, have won 14 of their last 16 games and 12 of their last 13 and rolled through The American tournament, defeating UConn, 71-61, in the championship game in Memphis. This may be the Cardinals' last go-around before leaving for the ACC, but they are hottest team in the country and are playing their best basketball at the right time of the season.
The Cardinals may not have experienced shot blocker Gorgui Dieng or point guard Peyton Siva, but they do return Final Four stars like All America guard Russ Smith, forward Luke Hancock, the Most Outstanding Player of last year's Final Four; and forward Montrezel Harrell, an all-league performer whose game blossomed in the U19 Worlds last summer at Prague.
The celebrities on the roster apparently did not phase the NCAA selection committee, which is too hamstrung by numerical formula.
The committee, which doesn't factor in efficiency or margin of victory, used metrics to relegate them to a No. 4 seed in the loaded Midwest Region, which includes Wichita State, Kansas State, Kentucky, Duke and Michigan. It is conceivable the Cardinals may have to get by bitter rival Kentucky or top-seeded Wichita State in a Sweet 16 game in Indianapolis.
But it is difficult to dismiss any team coached by Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino, who won his second national title last March when the Cardinals rallied to defeat Michigan in the championship game at Atlanta.
Pitino, who felt the Cardinals deserved a No. 1 seed but probably would be a No. 2 prior to the announcement, hasn't commented on the surprisingly low seed, which was based primarily on the Cardinals' strength of schedule and early season losses to North Carolina and Kentucky. Louisville is seeded below a pair of No. 3s -- Iowa State, which has seven losses; and Syracuse, which started the season 25-0, but has lost five of its last seven games.
The decision to downgrade the defending national champions reportedly sparked disbelief among some Louisville players on Instragram and outrage among commentators, who, unlike the computers, actually took time to see the Cardinals play down the stretch.
"I can’t believe that Louisville, based on an eye test, could be a 4 seed,'' longtime ESPN analyst Dick Vitale said on ESPN's selection show. "I thought they deserved so much better, and I thought they should’ve been much higher.”
The “eye test” refers to a comment made by Ron Wellman, the head of the selection committee, who said "Louisville passed everybody's eye test" earlier in the day and "were playing as well as anybody in the country.''
Wellman is the AD at Wake Forest. ACC champion Virginia, which lost to Wisconsin and had a 35 point loss to Tennessee in the nonconference, was awarded a No. 1 seed in the East Wellman said his group used the body-of-work argument for Virginia -- which, like Louisville, didn't beat any of its high-profile nonconference foes. That means the Cavaliers were given a three-seed bump over Louisville by virtue of winning the ACC.
The rationale didn't play with everyone.
“To suggest that Louisville isn’t one of the top 12 teams in the country just boggles the mind. I just don’t understand that. They absolutely are,'' perceptive analyst Jay Bilas said on the same selection show.
No matter.
The Cardinals are the one team no one seems to want to play. Ken Pomeroy's rating has the Cardinals ranked No. 2 slightly behind Arizona. The Cardinals have the second best chance to win the tournament, according to the Prediction Machine.
Then, there is this.
Famed statistics guru Nate Silver, writing Monday on the newly launched FiveThirtyEight.com, has Louisville with the best chance of winning the NCAA Tournament. FiveThirtyEight lists the Cardinals as having a 15-percent chance of winning it all.
The Florida Gators (14 percent chance of winning the tournament), the Arizona Wildcats (13 percent), the Kansas Jayhawks and the Virginia Cavaliers (both 6 percent) follow Louisville. FiveThirty Eight said the prediction model considers "a composite of power rankings, pre-season rankings, the team's placement on the NCAA's 68-team S-curve, player injuries and geography."