Experts foiled again

The beauty of the NCAA men's tournament can be found in a variety of ways -- team camaraderie, Cinderella stories and buzzer beaters are just a few of them.

Perhaps more entertaining than all of those, however, is the ironic fact that all the so-called experts for all of sports media are left eating mad crow.

Who doesn't like to see sportscasters, whose job many of us desire, pick teams who end up getting pounded in the second round?

Seth Davis, of Sports illustrated and CBS fame, picked Gonzaga and Stanford. Oops!

Gregg Doyel, a senior writer covering NCAA men's basketball for CBS Sportsline, also picked Gonzaga and Stanford, double oops.

I must admit here that both Doyel and Davis' choices convinced me to pick the Zags and the Cardinal as well. (Not to mention the fact that I desperately wanted a west coast team to represent for once)

Dick Vitale picked Kentucky to win it all. I don't know about you, but I just love it when that man is wrong.

I could go on and on about a number of suspects, each of whom, to my calculations, have no more than nine of the final sixteen teams on their brackets.(See online expert picks at SI.com or CBS Sportsline.com.)

In the next four days, we can all delight in the strong performances of Nevada, UAB, Alabama and Xavier. I do expect at least one of these teams, if not two, to make the Round of 8.

There is no question it will difficult for any of them to make the final four, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised. Of the four, who is most likely to do it?

This may be surprising, and certainly you won't hear it from Dickey V. "baby," but I think Nevada has the best shot. The way they played this past weekend in Seattle leaves one wondering how they lost any games.

Nevada has legitimate NBA talent in Kirk Snyder and Nick Fazekas, strong point guard play in Todd Okeson, and a great inside presence in Kevin Pinkney. Lookout Georgia Tech.

However, whatever happens this weekend, don't look to the experts for any help. How many of them had Nevada winning any games? Who didn't have Kentucky at least going to the elite eight?

On a side note, I saw Jay Bilas on ESPN the other day, and he did the greatest job of waffling then any of the so-called "experts" to date. On SportsCenter, Bilas continued to finish all of his picks with the phrase, "but this bracket is wide open and really, any of these teams could win."

Could win...

That is the beauty of the tournament this year -- and every year for that matter. By the time the second weekend rolls around, all the analysts and experts we listened to for advice on our office pools are relegated to waffling.

Really, what this tournament brings out more than any other sport is the fact that the sportscasters and expert analysts are no better at picking the winners of these games than the rest of us sports junkies.