It's March. You all know what that means: brackets, baby.  And what better way to get warmed up for the big time than a run through this weekend's games in Kansas City?  The Big 12 tourney always seems to have a couple of surprises up its sleeve.  This year, no Big 12 team seems realistically on the bubble right now, which means the only thing to fight for is higher seeding (or for one of the bottom 5 to make a Cinderella type run to the automatic bid). Put on your picking pants, ladies and gentlemen.  It's March. Let's dance.

First, of course, the bracket:

WEDNESDAY:                      THURSDAY:                       FRIDAY:                    SATURDAY:

#8 Colorado

#9 Texas Tech                      #1 Kansas

#5 Missouri

#12 Nebraska                      #4 Texas A&M

                                                                                         SEMIFINALS                  FINALS

#7 Oklahoma State

#10 Oklahoma                    #2 Kansas State

#6 Texas

#11 Iowa State                    #3 Baylor

Sorry for the poor formatting.  A nice copy of the bracket  can be found here (warning: PDF file):

http://www.big12sports.com/fls/10410/championships/pdfs/2010_mbasketball_bracket.pdf?DB_OEM_ID=10410

The scoring system shall be this:

1 point for each Opening Round game picked correctly

2 points for each Quarterfinals game picked correctly

4 points for each Semifinals game picked correctly

8 points for picking the correct champion

TIEBREAKING BONUS: Who will be named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player?

A couple of trends to keep in mind:

• No team lower than a 3 seed has ever won this tournament, but the 1 seed has only won 5 times before.
  
• A team that plays opening day has made the finals 4 times in the 13 previous tournaments.
• Kansas has won 6 Big 12 Tournament titles and was runner-up one other year.

RCT Nation: Post your picks below before Wednesday. Winner gets $1,000 from DenverJhawk! *

via n3t.net

*NOTE: Winner does not get $1,000 from DenverJhawk.