{"id":5304,"date":"2015-02-19T22:58:52","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:22:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T06:00:00","slug":"madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2015\/02\/19\/madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In less than a month, the exhilarating few weeks the sports world has dubbed &#8220;March Madness&#8221; will be upon us. For many of us, school will suddenly move down the priority list and mobile devices will become in-class TVs.<\/p>\n<p>For others, the NCAA Tournament simply means five minutes with a pencil picking games based on whose name sounds cooler or whose jerseys are prettier. Regardless, here are six teams I believe can get there:<\/p>\n<p>University of Kentucky (26-0) \u2013 They haven&#8217;t lost, and might not. This team is packed full of talent and defends as well as anyone. You can&#8217;t go wrong picking Coach Cal&#8217;s Wildcats to make the Final Four.<\/p>\n<p>Duke (22-3) \u2013 With possibly the best big man in Jahlil Okafor, a group of talented young guards and the winningest coach in Division I basketball history, Duke is without question a championship-caliber team.<\/p>\n<p>Wisconsin (23-2) \u2013 Coming off of a Final Four appearance last year, this year&#8217;s squad might actually be better. There&#8217;s no reason Frank Kaminsky and the country&#8217;s most efficient offense can&#8217;t do it again.<\/p>\n<p>Virginia (24-1) \u2013 Tony Bennett&#8217;s Cavaliers have the nation&#8217;s best defense and have only lost once. If second-leading scorer Justin Anderson returns from his broken finger, watch out.<\/p>\n<p>Arizona (22-3) \u2013 The Wildcats came within a point of the Final Four last year, and have been as consistently good this year. Balanced scoring and length in the frontcourt give Sean Miller&#8217;s team a solid shot to take that extra step in March.<\/p>\n<p>Villanova (24-2) \u2013 The Big East&#8217;s best team has flown under the radar most of the season, but leading scorer Darrun Hilliard II can only be described as a star. Jay Wright took Villanova to the Final Four in 2009 and this team looks primed to do it again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Team records are all as of Wednesday Feb. 18.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In less than a month, the exhilarating few weeks the sports world has dubbed &#8220;March Madness&#8221; will be upon us. For many of us, school will suddenly move down the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14636,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-5304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-hurricane-florence"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14636"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}