Bock: Bracket Predictions for the 2023 NCAA Tournament

March Madness is upon us! We are under 24 hours before West Virginia and Maryland tips us off with the round of 64 games. Let’s take a look at my bracket. We’ll figure out later how quickly my bracket gets busted.

National Title Game:

Kansas over Arizona

Final Four:

Kansas, Houston, Arizona, Duke

Cinderellas:

No. 12 Charleston, No. 12 Drake

Shockers:

Purdue and Texas eliminated first weekend

Prediction for Big 12:

3 Sweet-16 teams (Kansas, Kansas State, TCU)

Prediction for West Virginia:

Round of 32 loss to Alabama

Here’s my official bracket…

We’ll see how quickly it gets ruined tomorrow pic.twitter.com/s2loK8WduK

— Ethan Bock (@ethanbock_) March 15, 2023

I picked Kansas to go back-to-back because we’ve all seen this story before. There’s no way the Jayhawks won’t use losing the Big 12 Tournament Championship as motivation to go on a deep run. Kansas is built a lot like last year’s group.

I think the Big 12 has a lot of tough matchups in the tournament early-on. Texas has a tough weekend with 26-win Colgate and an underseeded Texas A&M team, or a hot Penn State group. In the end, I have Kansas, Kansas State and TCU going to the second weekend for the conference. I was big on Baylor because of their great guard play and the recent emergence by Jalen Bridges. But their momentum has been shot and a second-round matchup versus Creighton is a nightmare.

I have West Virginia defeating Maryland in the round of 64 and eventually falling to the overall No. 1-seed Alabama.