Other than Mason Jones, they don’t really have any consistent talent, no inside game, their defense started out good, but deteriorated drastically. I don’t think they will even beat Vandy in Nashville, which is basically a road game, and certainly will lose to South Carolina, who’s just way tougher, even if they do.
I also don’t like the format, you’re never going to see a long shot or underdog make a run in this format.
It should just be the 14 vs 1, 13 vs 2, 12 vs 3, 11 vs 4, and so on. No team that plays on Wednesday will have any legs left, even if they get to the Semis by some miracle. It’s just going to be a lot of boring blow out basketball until the end.
You’re correct, someone would still have to have a bye, probably the #1 seed, which is usually Kentucky. I still think that would be more fair with some obvious tinkering. No team that plays on Wednesday will ever win the tournament in this set up.
You might be correct with no one on Wed will ever win.
However, if you give the #1 a bye, it’ll happen again with an uneven number of teams. The way they do it works out. Only way to fix it (in my opinion) is expand to 16 teams (would work the way you want it to), or say only the Top 8 teams can play in the conference tourney (Bottom 6 punished for not playing better). But it’s about money, so that second scenario will never happen, the expansion to 16 might. How long would be the question though.