ESPN Men's Basketball

So, either you all fell into a sugar coma and woke up on Feb. 21 just in time for Bracket Buster Saturday, or we're jumping the gun before it's even out of the holster again.

Then again, Joe Lunardi, the man who invented Bracketology, is on salary for the whole month, so why not squeeze in a warning shot before the first jump ball of the new year?

In fact, why not fire off several? I mean, he's got his bracket, and we've got ours. And because you can't say Lunardi without saying "loon,'' ours is plainly better -- and that's not just the thermos full of Yukon Jack talking, either.

Giving Dayton something to do on a perfectly normal Tuesday night, it's Arkansas-Pine Bluff (4-24 a year ago) and Birmingham Southern (still two years away from being invited to the Big South Tournament) in a showdown between two teams that don't like each other very much, even though neither one has ever heard of the other.

And now, the regionals:

1. Connecticut
16. The Citadel
The preseason No. 1 pick faces a team from a military school whose center, Aaron Xia, may well play for the Chinese Olympic team.

8. Virginia Tech
9. Miami, Fla.
Two of the many teams headed for the ACC. Normally, the committee doesn't like to put teams from the same conference against each other in the first round, but by the time it came around to these two, most of the committee members were sleep-deprived and would have taken the Milwaukee Brewers and Saskatchewan Rough Riders just to go home.

5. Louisville
12. UC Irvine
Rick Pitino says he has "always admired the Irvine program, and has been scouting UCI for weeks now, and that the Anteaters ... wait a minute. The Anteaters? What, are you yanking me here? The Anteaters? No, seriously, who the hell are we playing?''

4. Florida
13. James Madison
Billy Donovan has only one senior, while JMU is the best of the dead presidents, with a better record than George Washington, James Madison, Franklin Pierce, Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger Universities.

3. Kansas
14. Sacramento State
Bill Self met expectations in his first year at Roy Williams A&T, while Sac State had a school-wide symposium in November to decide if sports was more important to the school than the janitorial service.

6. North Carolina State
11. St. Bonaventure
The Bonnies promise to show up this time.

7. Connecticut Women
10. Niagara
Geno Auriemma couldn't get Jim Calhoun to agree to strip to his shorts and arm-wrestle for the big office, so he's trying it this way. Niagara is caught after the tournament dressing Hall of Famer Calvin Murphy as swing man Tremmell Darden.

2. Syracuse
15. Buffalo
Jim Boeheim loves his home, and Rochester doesn't have a Division I school. Unclear, though, whether the Buffalo in question is the Bulls, Bills or Sabres.


1. Gonzaga
16. Tennessee State
The Zags' best team ever faces a team playing with nothing to lose ... especially since Nolan Richardson III is no longer the coach and packing heat in the gym.

8. Drake
9. Princeton
It's an 8mm film from the 30s -- the bounce pass meets the back door cut, and the final score is 9-7, in double overtime.

5. Wisconsin
12. Sacred Heart
The Badgers are tournament regulars, but Sacred Heart has never been here before, and who can't love a team coached by Dave Bike whose two best players are Kibwe Trim and Mading Mading?

4. Texas
13. IUPUI
The Longhorns try to get back to the Final Four by beating the Expos' malignant orange mascot.

3. Oklahoma
14. Texas A&M
Here's that chance for the Aggies to avenge the football game.

6. Stanford
11. Butler
Not an obvious first-round showdown, except that most Stanford grads only know the kind of butler who brings the gin and tonic.

7. Marquette
10. Baylor
Scott Drew is named Coach of the Year, President of the University, and Secretary of the Treasury.

2. Arizona
15. High Point
"High Point'' is more than just a name ... until the opening tip.


1. Duke
16. Play-In Game Winner
Or the Cleveland Cavaliers, who will otherwise be free by then.

8. St. Francis (N.Y.)
9. St. Francis (Pa.)
The Pope takes time from his Easter homily to say, "Take Frankie, and lay the three-and-a-half.''

5. Wake Forest
12. Army
Dick Vitale doesn't think much of this matchup, but he loves the bracket.

4. Kentucky
13. Maryland
So does Billy Packer.

3. Illinois
14. Virginia
In fact, this is the bracket John Swofford dreams of while the rest of us are wasting our fantasy time on Zooey Deschanel, Matt Damon, or the guy from the lottery office.

6. Fresno State
11. Georgia Tech
It's the wave of the future in college sports ...

7. Southern Illinois
10. Florida State
And it could end up being a permanent arrangement if this goes well.

2. North Carolina
15. Clemson
It's a bracket with a 50 percent ACC presence, soon to grow to 75 percent, until Swofford moves on to the next phase of the grand plan --- swallowing the AFC Central, the Bank of America and the former central Asian republics of the Soviet Union.


1. Michigan State
16. North Carolina A&T
A big year for Jerry Eaves, the new A&T coach, who wins four times as many games in the MEAC Tournament as the Aggies did all last year. The feelgood story of the season that Katie Couric missed.

8. Florida Atlantic
9. Florida International
And it's your job to figure out who's who.

5. Utah
12. Akron
Gotta love them Zips. Oh, you mean they're not named after chimps? Well, screw it, then.

4. Saint Joseph's
13. Lipscomb
St. Joe's coach Phil Martelli does three days' worth of standup on his Philly TV show reliving memories of watching Big Daddy Lipscomb on TV with his dad until someone tells him the school wasn't named after the old Colt. "The hell with it,'' Martelli says, and he begins juggling cleavers in his underwear until the commercial.

3. Cincinnati
14. St. Louis
It's the Conference USA kiss-off, with Bob Huggins bursting into flames at halftime just to show that he can.

6. Cal
11. Hofstra
The Golden Bears have more live freshmen than an episode of "Daria.'' The Pride used to be the Flying Dutchmen. We like "Daria'' as a quality cartoon. We don't like the Pride as a nickname.

7. Maryland-Baltimore County
10. Maryland-Eastern Shore
Screenplay by Barry Levinson, and starring Yaphet Kotto and Richard Belzer as the coaches with dark secrets from their past, or something like that.

2. Missouri
15. Louisiana-Monroe
The Tigers overcome a rocky stretch of news by drawing the 83-year-old old Delta blues singer in the opening round.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com