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2026 Anonymously Through The Brackets: West Region

· Yahoo Sports

There’s Wilbur, suspiciously without Wilma…….. | Jacob Snow-USA TODAY Sports

Sick of hard-hitting analysis of the 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament? Up to your eyeballs in expert picks chock-full of astute takes on players to watch and budding upsets?

Fear not, friends: your pals at Anonymous Eagle are here to inject some half-baked, homespun “insight” into the proceedings, with our (mostly) annual region-by-region tour, as we go Anonymously Through the Brackets.

Visit solvita.blog for more information.

For each region, we’ll give you our patented Anonymous Eagle Half-Arsed Analysis with: a gutless pick to win the region; a sleeper regional champ; a CRUSH YOUR MAN upset special; a player/team we’d pay to watch; a player most likely to carry his team singlehandedly to the Sweet 16; and the best player in the region that you’ve never heard of before.

Let’s move around to the West Region, which is kind of funny, because on the NCAA’s website, the West Region is in the “northeast” corner of the page, if it were a map….. anyway….

GUTLESS WONDER Pick To Win The Region

The #1 team in the AP poll for nine straight weeks this season is absolutely a cheap way out of picking this region, especially since they’ve been in the top five for every in-season poll. That alone would be a good enough reason to go with Arizona as the favorite in the West.

However, by definition, the Gutless Wonder pick has to be either the #1 or the #2 seed in a region, and picking Arizona is even the coward’s way out of that decision. Purdue is the #2 seed here, and they came into the Big Ten tournament with losses in four of their last six games to wrap up a run of just 6-7 in their last 13. Then they won the Big Ten tournament. In order to pick Purdue here, you have to be confident you’re picking “started 17-1” Purdue and not “finished 6-7 Purdue.” That takes guts, and we won’t be having that here. Go Wildcats!

CHEX BOLD PARTY MIX Bold Pick To Win The Region

You have to be bold to pick a team that had a nine year Sweet 16 streak snapped last season to turn around and win the region. You have to be especially bold to look your friends in the eye and say “yes, I believe in Gonzaga to win this” with your entire chest. Mark Few always has a good basketball team, but the fact of the matter is that they haven’t been the Final Four since 2021, aka The Weirdest College Basketball Season Ever, and before that, they haven’t been since 2017. If you say “I really like the Zags here,” your friends are going to start lining up to figure out how else they can fleece you out of your money. Take the risk with the #3 seed, and remember: There’s no such thing as a wallet inspector.

CRUSH YOUR MAN Upset Special

No, I don’t care that KenPom.com says that High Point has just a 17% chance of pulling the 5/12 special here. I say let’s cheer for the Panthers and their 14 game winning streak, the longest active streak in the country right now. Who are they playing? Wisconsin? Total coincidence that I’m picking HPU here. It’s actually a slam on Creighton head coach in waiting Alan Huss because he left this team to go hang out with Greg McDermott again, yeah, that’s the ticket.

Also: #10 seed Missouri is playing #7 Miami (FL) in Saint Louis, and KenPom says that’s a 3 point game on a neutral court…. which it absolutely will not be.

Player I’d Pay To Watch

When other coaches in the league in question are lining up to tell the world that they don’t understand why a particular player isn’t getting more attention as one of the best players in the country and perhaps even one of the top picks in the NBA Draft, you sit up and take notice.

I knew Darius Acuff was doing cool stuff for Arkansas, but when Texas head coach Sean Miller spent his postgame media to talk about Acuff, I sat up and took notice. The former Xavier head man glowed about Acuff after his Longhorns had lost by 20 in a game that would have made their path to the NCAA tournament’s First Four much easier, and Acuff was a big reason why: 28 points, 13 assists on the 27 buckets he didn’t score himself, three rebounds, 4-for-6 from behind the arc. Top 50 assist rate, sub-12% turnover rate, 45% behind the arc, a silky smooth 51% inside it, yep, throw your credit card at the TV to make it show you Darius Acuff in the tournament.

The Chiropractor Special: aka Who Can Put The Team On His Back?

At this point, the only way that BYU is making a run in the tournament is if AJ Dybantsa drags the Cougars along. BYU was already starting to struggle after a 16-1 start to the season, dropping five of their last seven games before Richie Saunders and his 38% three-point shooting went down for the year in mid-February. BYU is just 4-5 without Saunders now, 5-5 if you count the game where he played one minute before suffering the injury.

Dybantsa is widely considered to be one of the prospects most likely to go top five in the NBA Draft in June, and BYU is going to need him to prove he should be the #1 overall pick if they want to go on a tournament run like they might have been thinking was possible back around Christmas. The Cougars get the advantage of playing a First Four team — either Texas or NC State — so perhaps the extra rest helps them, too.

Best Guy You’ve Never Heard Of

Can I interest you in Hawaii’s Isaac “Big Fish” Johnson? The 7’0”, 240 pound center has Hawaii back in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2016, thanks to 14.1 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 1.1 blocks per game. He also shoots threes just enough — 32% — to be dangerous out at the arc, and oh, right: He does the Big Fish Chomp (it’s Florida’s Gator Chomp) after big plays.

Also! Look at Hawaii’s sick uniforms!

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