1. Mateen Cleaves vs. 16. Percy Snow

Our top seed is the quintessential Tom Izzo point guard Mateen Cleaves. Pick a superlative to describe what Tom Izzo needs in his floor general and it all stems back to Cleaves. He was the leader of the 2000 national championship team and is the name every ball handler that steps foot in the Breslin Center gets compared to. I could write 1,000 words on Cleaves’ individual and team accomplishments, but I don’t really think I need to.

He takes on Percy Snow, who is wildly under-seeded. Really though, this entire tournament is full of under-seeded people. There’s only so many seeds to go around and Snow only got one nomination. He was player of the game in the 1988 Rose Bowl and won both the Butkus Award and Lombardi Award. Only four college football players in history can say that. He’s going to lose this matchup, but he doesn’t deserve to go out in the first round of the tournament. That’s just how the cookie crumbles.

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