Ahh…March Madness. I love this time of year, especially the opening weekend of play. Nothing like it!

Today, the pairings for the tournament were announced. Here are some of my initial thoughts on this:

Kentucky gets a #8 seed - That’s about right. They didn’t have a good year at all. An 8 seed may actually be a little high, but for the 7-10 seedings, does it really matter? They’re all so close and they aren’t really considered upsets if the lower seeds win.

Kentucky meets Villanova in the first round - Wildcats vs. Wildcats. Haven’t heard much of Vill this year, but I have seen how KY is playing. Gonna be a tough game no matter who it is. Even if KY beats Vill, it’s Kansas in the second round and there’s no chance we can beat them. At least we’re used to losing in the second round by now… :-/

UK’s first two games are in Chicago - Close to home, and since we have a great traveling fan base, maybe that will be enough to push us to a first round win. But then again, we haven’t done very well at “home” this year.

Vanderbilt has a higher seed than KY - Granted, Vandy beat us twice and had a pretty good year, but a 6 seed? They’ve had some good wins against ranked teams, but they’ve also had some bad losses to very bad teams. 8 or 9 seed seems like more of a fit.

Florida is overall #1 seed - I don’t agree with that. I think Ohio State deserved it, followed by Kansas, UNC, then Florida. People are just hyping the potential for the first repeat since 1991-92. Not gonna happen. I HOPE it doesn’t happen. I can’t stand Noah…

Arkansas made it in - What’s up with that? I didn’t think they were even being considered. I would have left them out and added…

Drexel, Air Force and Syracuse left out - I can’t claim that I followed or know much about these teams, but from what I have heard from the “experts,” I had been convinced they should be in the field of 65. Especially over Arkansas…

Louisville’s first two games will be in Lexington - Talk about a home court advantage!

This year, they went back to naming the brackets by region (West, Midwest, South and East) rather than the location of the regional finals (San Jose, St Louis, San Antonio, East Rutherford) - Region names made more sense before they went to the “pod” system. Now, having the opening round games of the West region in Buffalo, NY just doesn’t make sense anymore.. Of course, having the opening games of the San Jose region in Buffalo doesn’t make much sense either…

Who’s going to be the Cinderella team this year? - Only 6 non-power conference teams got at-large bids, the lowest in 4 or 5 years, I think. That means there’s less of a chance that a George Mason, Valpo, or Xavier will make it far into the tournament.

That’s all I have for now. What are your thoughts?