“March Sadness”

As of noon on Sunday I have seen every game in this year’s NCAA Basketball Tournament. I’d like to say I was smart enough to have planned it but it took a lot of luck for it to work out the way it did.

I was scheduled for eye surgery on Thursday so I knew that I wouldn’t be doing any work for at least a couple of days. However, I had no idea I would be back home and stretched out on the sofa, which is conveniently situated in front of the television, by 11 o’clock on Thursday morning. And, being the good patient I always am, (I am not ignoring my doctor’s instructions to lose 20 pounds, exercise more than once a month and eliminate cheese as a food group, I’m just postponing those until I’m well) I was certainly going to follow doctors orders: do nothing. I did this with all the tenacity that a temporarily one-eyed basketball fanatic could muster and gobbled up 24 games in three days.

I’m thankful that I did not fill out a bracket because I sure would have looked ignorant. I always pick the favorites through the first round and any remaining six or above seeds in the second round. I would have been destroyed with 25 percent of the favorites going down in the first round alone.

Oh, did I fail to mention that one of those second round upsets was Duke? You know that ACC team that my Darling Sister is so obsessed with? The one that has the audacity to breathe the air under the same Carolina Blue sky as my beloved Tar Heels?  Well, being the loving, caring brother that I am, I got out of my sick bed (the sofa) to talk her down off of a ledge. It took a while, but truly wasn’t all that difficult to point out that jumping off the roof of the Piggly Wiggly was not going to correct the problem of no low post presence, senior Demarcus Nelson taking the week off, and the Dookies’ ineffectual commitment to the three ball. In the end I convinced her that her one character flaw (she really is a sweet, kind and very funny woman. She just has that one rogue gene which compels her to root for the wrong color blue) did not make her less than a worthwhile human being.

I would never tell her this, but I was actually disappointed that they lost. The ACC did not look good anyway, going into the Tournament with only four entries. Clemson went out to a 12 seed in the first round and Duke had to further embarrass the Conference with a one-point win over powerhouse Belmont. Did you know that Belmont’s curriculum strength is in its Country Music courses? I’m glad I was diplomatic enough not to bring that up…it could have precipitated a cruel ending for my darling sister Pat.

Of course, North Carolina looked like world beaters in dusting off Mount Saint Mary by a cool 39. My brother-in-law, Art, was afraid Carolina had wasted a too good performance on what he called “a high school team.” However, looking at it from a professional sports writer’s perspective, I know that Powhatan High, even with Emmett Brown and a healthy Luke Meyers, would have gone down by at least twenty to the mighty Mountaineers.

The talking heads talking about actually expanding the tournament to as many as twice the current 65 puts Carolina’s 39-point win in the category of a buzzer-beater or at least a nail-biter. They would have us believe that so many deserving teams don’t get in under the current format and that the tournament is an essential part of the “college basketball experience.” Actually, it is all about the money. I just wonder how many fans would have paid the price of a ticket to see Carolina and Mount Saint Mary face off during the regular season. Probably no more than they would pay to watch a number two seed demolish a number fifteen seed like…oops.

Anyway, I want to go on record as an advocate of cutting the field down to the top 20 teams regardless of conference and conference tournaments. After all, when am I ever going to have the planets aligned again in such a way that I will be able to watch all 64 games again?