Bracketology in April?

Brian: Give it a rest, Joe Lunardi. A little over a week since North Carolina's defeat of Michigan State in the NCAA men's basketball championship, and ESPN resident "bracketologist" Joe Lunardi already has a 2009-2010 bracketology up. Boston College is listed as one of the First Four Teams Out.

The ACC, by seed: (1) Duke, (3) North Carolina, (3) Wake Forest, (5) Clemson, (10) Florida State, (11) Miami (FL), (12) Maryland.

Jeff, please tell Mr. Lunardi what you think of his 2010 tournament field.

Jeff: First, I think ESPN's bracketologist has Boston College pegged pretty well. If you translated BC's First Four Out spot to the preseason polls it would probably place the Eagles receiving one or two votes, possibly a few more and possibly none at all. That is exactly where I believe the Eagles deserve to be at the start of the 2009-2010 season. BC earned a 7 seed in the tournament this year which means they were top 30 at that point and did not win their first round game. The Eagles freshmen and sophomores maturing is offset by losing Tyrese Rice. As a realist, you have to set a goal for the basketball team of achieving what they did last year and that is a winning record in conference and an NCAA tournament bid. These could even be considered lofty goals but that's what the team's goals should be.

As for the rest of the field, there is a very interesting matchup shaping up in San Jose according to Mr. Lunardi between #5 Clemson and #12 South Carolina. That would have people going crazy down here in my neck of the woods. In my opinion, though, South Carolina will not even sniff the NCAA tournament next year as the SEC is likely to be more competitive and the Gamecocks are likely to lose their best player, Devan Downey, to the NBA.

Brian: You've gone soft on me Jeff. I wasn't expecting you to analyze these brackets too closely because it is APRIL. Some tough job Joe Lunardi has here. Not all underclassmen have even declared for the NBA yet, yet we still have a meaningless bracket. Of course it's easy to pair Clemson with South Carolina in APRIL. Lunardi should have also thrown in Boston College vs. Notre Dame, Louisville vs. Memphis, Florida vs. Florida State and Binghamton vs. Syracuse in the first round too for kicks.

This bracket is a joke. Joe, please go on a nice, long summer vacation, enjoy some MLB baseball, and come back to us in the fall. ESPN should put a moratorium on any new bracketology updates until ... at least Midnight Madness makes its stops at college campuses around the country.