The 2019 NCAA tournament bracket is set, and the top seeds should come as no surprise: Duke, Virginia, North Carolina, and Gonzaga. The no. 2 seeds are Tennessee, Michigan State, Kentucky, and Michigan, and after that … well, the field seems entirely wide open. Can any of the second-tier schools make a deep run in this tourney? Or will chalk ultimately prevail? Mark Titus and Tate Frazier break it all down on the latest episode of One Shining Podcast.
Listen to the full podcast below. This transcript has been edited and condensed.
Mark Titus: All these three seeds, these four seeds, these five seeds, I don’t really trust any of them. No disrespect. You’ve all had great years. Congratulations, Purdue, you won the Big Ten.
Tate Frazier: Everyone that made the tournament had a great year.
Titus: You had a great season. Great season.
Frazier: We’re a fan of the program.
Titus: We’re all very excited for you and very happy for you, but I’m just looking over all of the threes, the fours, the fives and how these brackets shake out. This feels like [the] 2015 [NCAA tournament] all over again to me, where one, Duke is gonna win the title, but two, it’s gonna be the ones and the twos [in the Elite Eight].”
Frazier: So what you’re saying is déjà blue?
Titus: Déjà blue. There you go. That is my overarching thought about this tournament. I didn’t necessarily need the bracket to reveal that for me. The top eight seeds are the top eight on KenPom. They’re the eight teams that everyone had listed going into this thing. “Who are gonna be the one seeds? It’s probably gonna be some [combination] of these eight.”
There seems to be a very obvious gap between the top eight and the rest of the field, and with that, I feel like the ones and twos are gonna win, [and then] everything is a crapshoot. I’m with Seth [Davis] on this one. When it comes time to actually fill out my bracket, I’m probably just gonna pick a ton of upsets and then put all chalk in the Elite Eight.
Frazier: So you’re saying it’s coming down to the eye test?
Titus: Yes.