NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 predictions: Gary Parrish picks each game straight, ATS

The NCAA Tournament is down to the Sweet 16 and the rest of the ACC is at home on the couch watching the rest of the tourney.

So this should be fun. I’ve picked each straight up and against the spread. Trier is the difference here, and Arizona will get the best of Gonzaga this time.

Now that the dust has settled from a insane first weekend of college hoops, we can sit back and analyze the 16 remaining teams who are still fighting for this year’s title.

Kentucky coach John Calipari is animated on the sidelines, especially in the NCAA Tournament. The ability and confidence in knowing how to win close games at NCAA Tournament time is invaluable.

With no major upsets, every team remaining had to go through legitimate tests to get to where they are now. But I do love the Zags.

Furthermore, they went 3-0 against this season against #22 St. Mary’s, and won all 3 contests by double-digit margins. They’ll prove their worth in this Sweet 16 matchup. Lucky is good, you need to be lucky sometimes, but I prefer to be GOOD and take luck out of it! Anyways, I had Kansas playing Iowa State, which favors Kansas, and this Purdue game could be tough for them. This is a long, athletic team, led by double-double forward Johnathan Motley and point guard Manu Lecomte, who rescued Baylor in the second round against USC by scoring all 12 of his points in the final five minutes. “I don’t know. That’s up to you guys”, coach Gregg Marshall told reporters after his 10th-seeded Shockers lost 65-62 to Kentucky on Sunday. The game will be just down the road from Lawrence, so expect the Sprint Center to be rocking. However, that rather thin frontcourt must find a way to deal with Purdue’s Caleb Swanigan this week. With Kentucky, you just never know.

Suddenly, the conference that went into the tournament with no team seeded higher than No. 4 has three in regional semifinals, matching last year’s total.

With Butler coming up on Friday night, this game really makes me nervous.

No. 2 Arizona (-7.5) vs.

Looking like a team of destiny, MI won four games at the Big Ten tournament after its plane perilously skidded off the runway, and the hot streak continued with wins over Oklahoma State and No. 2 seed Louisville. To him, I tip my hat. Just ask North Carolina. As relating to sports, there’s not a better feeling in the world for me than when the evil empire bows out to someone who is seeded lower early in the tournament. Living in the PNW now, maybe I was distracted from the greatness that is the Pac-12 because the B1G 10 is legit. I think not. But that’s OK, we’re used to it!

The Wolverines shrugged off an airplane scare on their way to the Big Ten tournament title and then shrugged off No. 2 seed Louisville on Sunday to make it to this point, so who says they can’t continued to shrug their way to victory on Thursday night against the Ducks? It’s time to walk through. The Bruins have taken three-quarters of the action so far, pushing a spread that opened as far as Kentucky minus-1 to UCLA minus-1. And I don’t want to disrespect my bracket.

Even UCLA’s sensational freshman Lonzo Ball is surrounded by two experienced, savvy backcourt mates in Isaac Hamilton and Bryce Alford, who just happens to be the son of UCLA coach Steve Alford. But it’s worth noting that Kentucky will have a sizable fan advantage inside FedExForum. Trier and Markkanen now lead the team in points per game for the season and have continued this trend throughout the tournament.

At 23-13 and 11th seeded in the West, the Musketeers are the longest shot still on the board. However, West Virginia’s offensive rebounding percentage – the percentage of its own missed shots it rebounds, thus extending possessions – ranks fifth nationally, which could further tire out a Gonzaga team that’s likely to be already harried by the Mountaineers’ “Press Virginia” defense. It’s basically a coin-flip situation. Not many believed the Trojans were over-seeded, yet I felt it was an injustice for them to play another under-seeded No. 11 Providence team in the First Four match-up.