And overated midlands after that.
There is an almost paranoia here to give ND credit- fearing perhaps that we might jink ourselves. The preferred schedule of all teams is to play light and gradually increase the level until conf. This is what they have done. And they have been playing excellent bb. And is one of the favorites to win it all- they have everything: confidence, personalities and play. Uconn on the other hand had been forced to go top heavy- most of the top teams were very early on- because of a pending very weak bottom/conf schedule, and because the top teams (as pointed out earlier) prefere to concentrate on their conf. (and ranking). (I am well aware that Uconn had, in the past, mixed it's conf play with top teams-- as when they played Stanford X 2/year) This is the one problem I see a need to resolve once LV + RU leave. We will need the usual suspects- Stanford, ND, Baylor, etc to balance out the 2nd half. If we don't there will come noise from the peanut gallery (voters) about the diff between playing a Stanford in Dec. vs a Stanford in Feb/Mar. And if the ACC is (rightly/wrongly) perceived as the strongest conf then playing those playing and winning in that conf during conf play will get more attention. And a ND beating a Duke team for the 2nd time in conf and conf championship will garner more attention then a Uconn/Stanford win over Duke in Jan. Perceptions matter.
As for March madness, unless Uconn and ND begin to have close brushes and some other teams like a UNC, USC or a complete joker from the B10 or smaller conf put together a string of convincing runs the 2 heavies are Uconn and ND, with LV, Stanford and possibly Baylor as alternates. For ex. the impossible becomes possible: both Uconn and ND are trippedup before the final 4. What a Bam Bam that would be.
