March Madness

It’s MADNESS, I Tell You!

/ justdrivewillyou / 2 Comments

In the midst of all the soul-crushing, mind-pummeling news to which we’re daily subjected, allow me to offer this distraction:

NCAA championship basketball, more affectionately known as March Madness. 🏀 🏆

Now usually, I only keep up with college hoops as it relates to my alma mater, Baylor University. (2021 Men’s National Champion!) But when it comes time for March Madness, it’s hard to not get caught up in the excitement, the unpredictability, the mass hysteria that accompanies this tournament every year.

Speaking of madness, here’s a fun fact:

The tournament always starts on Thursday. On the day before, more vasectomies are performed in the U.S. than on any other day of the year.

Yeah. You heard me right.

Presumably, because it allows guys to stay home a couple of days to recover, giving them a good excuse to watch hoops all day.

Whatever, my fellow dudes. Remember, though, that works only once. (Or should, anyway 😳) You’re much bigger basketball fans than me. And I’m okay with that.

Anyway, back to the games. Yes, my Baylor Bears have already been eliminated from the competition – curse you, Tar Heels! – but that doesn’t mean I’m no longer interested. There are still some compelling storylines to follow. Such as:

Coach K’s Last Dance

Duke University coach Mike Krzyzewski, more commonly known as Coach K (thank goodness), has amassed the most victories of any men’s college hoops coach, going for number 1200 Sunday against Michigan State, in his final season of a legendary career spanning 47 years, 42 of them at Duke. That career includes five national championships and twelve Final Four appearances, the latter of which ties a record.

Naturally, many people would like nothing more than to see Coach K savor the sweet taste of one last triumph as he rides off into the sunset. And yes, that would be a fitting end to a superb career.

But then, what about…

The Cinderella Story

There’s one every year. The team that comes out of nowhere, from a school most of us have never heard of, and single-handedly screws up everybody’s bracket. (If you don’t know what I mean by that, this is clearly not your sport.) But once they show up, they immediately build a nationwide following; people root for them to go as far as they can, maybe even (😱) all the way!!

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Peacocks of Saint Peter’s University, from Jersey City, New Jersey.

Seeded 15th in the East Regional tournament, they announced their presence spectacularly, shocking Number 2 seed, and perennial powerhouse, University of Kentucky, with an 85-79 overtime victory.

Anybody who saw that coming should have bought a lottery ticket.

The Peacocks then followed that up with an 70-60 win over Murray State, another Kentucky school. (The whole state of Kentucky must hate these guys by now.) Mind you, Murray State came into this game on a 21-game winning streak. No problem for the Peacocks.

The win put Saint Peter’s in the Sweet Sixteen, making them only the third 15-seed team to ever do that. They now await the winner of the Purdue-Texas match.

And if you think this team feels at all intimidated by the bigger schools in its way, I offer the following, soon-to-be-immortal quote from Saint Peter’s head coach, Shaheen Holloway:

“I’m going to say this. It’s going to come off a little crazy. I got guys from New Jersey and New York City. You think we’re scared of anything? You think we’re worried about guys trying to muscle us and tough us out?”

Yeah, attitude!!! In…your…FACE!!

How can you not get behind that, I ask you?

Anyway, I think it’s still worth watching. Maybe now, you will, too. It’s a real good distraction.

Maybe even from a healing vasectomy; I’ll never know.

Oh, and I can still root for the Baylor Women’s team. Go, Lady Bears!

Embrace the Madness

/ justdrivewillyou / 1 Comment

 

No, this isn’t about my depression.

I’m talking March Madness. The NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships. It’s quite a spectacle; if you haven’t observed it before, it’s worth checking out.

What happens is, at the end of the regular season, a committee selects all the teams that will play in the tournament, based on criteria such as win-loss record, strength of schedule, favorite uniform colors, noise of school band, personal hygiene, etc. Approximately 2,000 teams are selected, (slight exaggeration, but it sure seems like that many) and paired up according to how they potentially match up against each other. It’s like match.com for college basketball.

And then they all play at once! But that’s OK if you have access to several video screens; you’ll be able to keep track of Duke vs. UCLA on one screen, and Upper Eastern Middle Hacksaw State vs. Our Lady of Airballs on another.

(Our Lady of Airballs, incidentally, is such a small school that this season, their team included two high school boys and the mascot. The mascot led the team in scoring.)

The thing is, all the games are elimination games, so the field whittles down quickly, from 2,000 teams to just two, who then play for the championship. That means any team, on any given day, can beat any other team. (not really, everybody just likes to believe that, but come on!) Some surprises happen along the way, though; some teams that were favored to go a long way in the tournament get “upset” by teams that basically weren’t given much of a chance. The reason those games are known as “upsets” is because all the people that filled out brackets get really upset when those happen.

What are brackets, you ask? Don’t.

Too late. You already did.

 

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Gives you a headache just looking at it, right? But lots of people – normally sane people – fill these things out, predicting the winners of all the games, and then bet money on them! Hence, the “Madness.”

Of course, many of these folks won’t stop with just one bracket. They may fill out dozens of these things, greatly increasing their odds of winning some big money…

…or of being locked away in a sanitarium.

Okay. Time to get crazy. Take it away, band!!