Everyone loves an underdog, right? Especially when it comes to NCAA Tournament time. If you’re not moved by the Butlers of the world, there’s a good chance you’re dead inside.
In that same spirit, we bring you a contest being put on by our friends at Point 3 (in many ways underdogs themselves in the basketball apparel game), that highlights the power of those NCAA Cinderellas. This is a contest that is part of their “Choose Your Underdog” campaign, where picking the right underdog team can get you $10,000.
The contest is simple – you enter the game and pick one team seeded No. 9 or lower in the tournament. For each round they win, you win. And the prizes escalate quickly as the squads move on.
To help you out in your picks, each day this week, we will be highlighting one of our top underdogs in the NCAA field. Today’s team is No. 11 seed in the East Region, Patriot League champions of the Bucknell Bison.
To start, Bucknell’s window to victories (and contest wins) in this tournament might have as much to do with drawing Butler in the first round as it does with their own makeup. Butler is good, no doubt, but they are vulnerable and they are likely placed a bit too high as a six seed.
They are facing a Bucknell program just a few years removed from their 2005-06 tourney runs when they won their first round games, upsetting a mighty Kansas team in ’05, and then Arkansas in ’06. They are not awed by the tournament setting and will not be intimidated by an opponent much closer to their DNA than one of the other high seeds.
The Bison like to control tempo and can be deliberate on offense, working to get the look that they want. The result is that they don’t score a ton of points and they won’t be raining barrages of threes on unsuspecting opponents. They will try to get opponents to play their style and they will look to exploit their greatest weapon: 6-11 NBA prospect center Mike Muscala (19 points and more than 12 rebounds per game this season).
Muscala’s game has evolved by leaps and bounds over the last few years, pushing him to one of the best inside-outside scoring weapons in all of college basketball (he leads the nation in double-doubles this season). When we discuss the thread that ties these posts all together – special players who can win games all by themselves – here’s a big man who can completely dominate by scoring and cleaning the glass. He has also shown that he can dominate against high profile teams, putting up 25 and 14 in a two-point loss against Missouri during the regular season.
Butler isn’t exactly stacked inside, and if Muscala can stay on the floor and out of foul trouble, Bucknell can win this game. Beyond that, a winnable matchup with Marquette looms in Round 2.
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