So Is Everyone Picking Virginia In Their Survivor Pools Tonight, Or Nah?

Alright, you guys all know how Survivor pools work. You need to choose a team to win, but you can only use each team one time throughout the entire tournament. If your team loses, or you run out of picks because you’ve used everyone, then you’re out. This year’s edition of the NCAA Tournament has made it very easy to survive up until this point. You are a moron if you’re already eliminated from a Survivor Pool. You overthought something. Don’t give me any bullshit about trying to pick upsets in the early rounds for tiebreakers later on. The name of the game is to survive and advance, and the favorites went 16-0 last weekend. It’s been a clear path so far, but the amount of chalk moving to the Sweet 16 has made this round much more difficult than usual…..except one game.

#12 Oregon vs. #1 Virginia. The Ducks are the only double digit seed left on the board. Virginia is -8.5 in Vegas, and this is the easiest, most obvious pick left in the entire tournament. But there’s a couple flaws in choosing the low hanging fruit tonight. The first of which is that you lose Virginia for the rest of the tournament. You’ll definitely need at least one team left in the final game, and you’ll have to have the champ. Well, using Virginia crosses off a pretty good option of the eventual champion. In fact, Vegas gives them the 2nd best odds out of the remaining 16.

Do you really want to get rid of them with the Elite 8, Final 4, and Championship still to go? Not to mention, the other benefit of staying off Virginia tonight is that EVERYONE ELSE will be on them. If you go contrarian tonight, and the Ducks pull off the upset, then you are set the rest of the way. Hell, you may win the whole damn thing tonight. And honestly, even though it’s a 12 vs. 1 matchup, is there a hotter team in the country than Oregon?

That’s 10 in a row, Pac 12 Champions, and two 18+ point tournament games. From 13-12 to 25-12. I’m not sure it’s as safe as everyone thinks it is to pick against them tonight. So what’s the move for the Sweet 16 round? Play it safe-ish with Virginia, or hop on one of those 2 vs. 3 matchups? I’m going with Michigan State. Can’t imagine LSU’s interim coach will do a better job getting his boys to play hard than this guy.