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The Arizona Wildcats are a sixth seed in the NCAA tournament, but the Belmont Bruins might as well be the favorite. We are attempting to compile all the picks against the Wildcats, and Anthony Gimino got a good start with a number of the national media. From CBS Sports, to Yahoo! Sports, to USA Today, to ESPN, Belmont is the sexy Cinderella.
It's not all that surprising. Arizona could very well fall to a lesser team, and no Wildcat fan would educatedly deny that. But Sean Miller's squad has been playing decently well of late. Still, people are picking the No. 11 seed Bruins, including:
- President Obama. Former Wildcat linebacker Lance Briggs tweeted that he was "appalled" that the President would do UA in.
- ESPN Insider Matthew Catagnus. The stats don't lie. Belmont is one of the best scoring and best shooting teams in NCAA hoops. While they have yet to pull off an upset in five tries, the Bruins are always considered a favorite to do so. Arizona has a great size advantage, however. The X-factor, as the Belmont bloggers at The Byrd Cage wrote, is stretch big man Trevor Noack. The Bruins also force a great number of turnovers (10th most in the nation), and that's something else that could doom the Wildcats.
- LA Daily News writer Scott Wolf.
- ESPN studio analyst and former coach Dan Dakich.
- Sports Illustrated's Seth Davis.
- Doug Gottlieb of CBS Sports, who isn't sticking to his guns a bit since picking the Wildcats to win it all prior to this season.