It's the Second Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Well we have reached my personal favorite time of the season in DIAA. The playoffs have arrived! We had some interesting conference championships today. Congratulations to the winners of their respective conference! A lot of DIA talk in the media but now it's time to get DIAA back into the action. Good luck to everyone in the playoffs this season!

Lets kick off the playoffs with my "best game" of each bracket.

NORTH

I feel like this bracket may be the deepest one this season. I think that figuring out which game to cover here was pretty easy though. The game of the first round from the North is the 4 seed Samford taking on the 5 seed Texas State. This will be the 11th meeting between these two legendary coaches with mraston taking 7 of the previous meetings against phimutau. These two coaches have been quiet in recent years, in terms of being vocal but they haven't missed a beat when it comes to making noise when coaching. Both of these high powered offenses average over 60 ppg and they do it in differing fashions. These turnover happy defenses will be on the prowl to do what they can to get the ball from these stupendous offenses.

SOUTH

The path to determine the winner of this bracket could be quite interesting. I think there are a couple of teams who have a great chance. The best game from the South region features 3 seed Grambling State taking on 6 seed Cal Poly. These two teams/coaches have been perennial early exit playoff teams. Both of these squads would love to advance to the second round and finally beyond. These 10-3 teams have had solid seasons but they will need to be on their A-game to make a playoff run. The offenses have been solid and are pretty efficient, the big question mark comes from the defensive side on both of these teams. The defenses have surrendered 30 or more points a combined 6 times this season and that resulted in 5 of their combined 6 losses.

EAST

This bracket seems to be pretty top heavy with only a couple of teams having a legitimate chance of making the final 4. The game we're highlighting in this region is the 4-5 seed matchup featuring Bucknell vs Charleston Southern. If we were doing a most improved team award these two would definitely be in the running. Both teams look to have taken huge steps in the right direction this season. Neither team looks to have a barn burner offense and turnovers have been a problem for them. These defenses will still need to play well for their team have a chance in this one. This will be the first time these two coaches have met so gameplanning can be tricky in these situations. These two improved teams would really like to keep their run going this season.

WEST

This region, like the West, seems pretty top heavy. Unless there are some surprises I think either the 1 or 2 seed will win this region. For the first round though, we are covering 3 seeded Western Carolina taking on 6 seeded Drake. These two teams have been in playoffs quite a bit but haven't had sustained, deep runs in quite some time. These two teams look to be very stout on both sides of the ball but with both coming in with SOS ranked higher than 90, some of those numbers might be inflated. Nevertheless these two coaches have done a great job this season. WCU boasts one of four undefeated records and Drake's only losses were to top 10 squads. Something has to give in this matchup, which team can get the most breaks?

For my full playoff predictions you can find them here.