Blog Posts For Tag: March Madness

Selection Sunday is as much about conference respect as the NCAA Men’s Tournament and this season the power conferences took a huge, humbling blow to the gut. Sure the Big East received eight bids and the Big 12 received seven, but the other conferences have to take stock of what happened this year and either accept that the Mid Majors have arrived or cry and whine until the field is expanded to 96 teams.

My heart jumped when I realized that my latest move landed me in the cave of married friends’ duplex in Chicago without any means to watch March Madness. They did not want to get cable, which is cool, and meant to get rabbit ears at some time but never quite got around to it. I could have gone out and splurged on rabbit ears and that digital signal box but I really did not want to start feeding me television habit. So there I was stuck between my desire to watch endless hours of basketball and not wanting to spend needless money on something I was going to use for a couple weeks. Then I found that NCAA.com was streaming the games live and the heart murmur went subsided.

Invariably, any basketball postseason experience, whether you are watching an NBA game or any of the contests on the slate during March Madness, will have a game that will come down to the final minutes and a four or five point deficit. It is moments like these, after years of watching painful finishes, that have made me despise announcers who feel required to say that the team trying to claw into the lead does not need to go for three.

Last year around this time I was eagerly awaiting the normal insanity brought about by the first two rounds of the Men’s Tournament only to find a rather lame series of results. Nine and ten seeds do not get upset status in the first round. So, there were five upsets in the first 32 games. That was not a very exciting development.

A week ago the number one seeds in the NCAA Tournament seemed pretty much set. UNC, Pittsburgh, UConn, and Oklahoma were on their way to leading the regions, but then a little funny thing happen called Championship Week. First Oklahoma lost in the Big 12 quarterfinals to Oklahoma State, then Pittsburgh lost in the Big East quarterfinals to West Virginia, and most recently UConn lost a ridiculously fantastic six-overtime game to Syracuse a few hours later. Meanwhile UNC is set to take on Virginia Tech with out star guard Ty Lawson. So, what is the seeding committee thinking?

Before baseball season begins it has become tradition to wait for Brett Favre to decide whether or not he will retire. Word is in that he has decided to retire. Of course, we all remember that last season he told his agent the same thing. Then he found that he could still throw the ball around with some zip with a bunch of high school kids, decided to comeback, and cause the Packers a gigantic headache, sabotaging Aaron Rodgers transition into the starting quarterback role.

I am a University of Illinois college basketball fan. If I am watching a game and the Fighting Illini are not playing, then I am a Big Ten fan. However, I have to give props to a couple of Big East teams.