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00:00Zeno, let's get to the West region, right below the South, where the one seed is also a team out of the SEC, that being Florida, perhaps the hottest or most dangerous team entering the big dance after winning the SEC tourney title, Florida minus 135 to win this region, advance to a Final Four. But Zeno, you go up and down this portion of the bracket. Great teams, great storylines, great coaches. How do you make sense of the West region?
00:26I'll never let anybody tell you that the NCAA tournament isn't a made-for-TV event, because the way they put the bottom of this bracket, it's all about TV. You got Bill Self and John Calipari going against each other in round one, and who will they meet in round two? Oh, it'll be Rick Pitino coaching against one of them. Three of the oldest and most seasoned coaches in all of college basketball. So yes, this is 100% a made-for-TV event, when you look at it. But there are a lot of interesting matchups here, and I have a lot of plays here in this first round.
00:53I think the most interesting matchup really is the Memphis Colorado State. I don't know how much Ben Stevens buys into the Mountain West, always seems to flame out in the NCAA tournament. It's narrative, maybe some coincidence. I don't know if there's any data point you could stick to that, but it is very telling that the Colorado State Buffaloes are two-and-a-half-point favorites over the five-seed Memphis Tigers, and some of that may just be the fact that Memphis, as a five-seed, probably was a little bit overvalued all year long.
01:23And really wasn't as good as the top 25 ranking that they had, so that'll be an interesting game to watch.