Ah, March Madness. With apologies to Christmas, this really is the most wonderful time of the year. I love the NFL Playoffs and the SEC college football conference game schedule, but nothing can match the excitement, intensity and unpredictability that the NCAA Tournament brings. Unlike all other sports, with a 68-team single elimination tournament, any team really can win it any given year. What other sport’s playoff can supply 32 games in two days and 48 games total in the first four days? And best of all is the bracket. Filling out a bracket every year is an American tradition on par with Opening Day in baseball and the hot dog eating contest on the 4th of July.
And the madness all starts with Selection Sunday, when the selection committee every year picks all the teams, seeds and match-ups of the tournament. Before I discuss anything else, let me say that even though some people still may feel slighted that Alabama didn’t make the tournament, the Tide didn’t deserve it this year. Quite frankly, Alabama had too many bad losses and not enough good wins. The Tide had its chances against tournament teams like Florida, Missouri, Ole Miss, Cincinnati and VCU, and it didn’t get the job done.
In fact, in the end Alabama only had two wins against NCAA tournament teams, and that was against ninth seed Villanova in the 2k Sports Classic, and its first win of the season against 13th seed, automatic qualifier South Dakota State. It doesn’t help that the SEC just wasn’t that good this year in basketball. Along with Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky were also exiled to the National Invitation Tournament. On the plus side, if the cards work out, the Tide may be able to exact our revenge on the evil Mercer (does anyone even know where Mercer is located?) in the NIT.
With that said, expect this to be one of the wildest, upset-happy tournaments in a long time because of the parity this year and a lack of truly dominant teams. With the exception of Gonzaga (the college basketball equivalent of an undefeated non-BCS conference team), every single team has at least five losses. We have head coaching giants like Mike Krzyzewski, Tom Izzo and Rick Pitino all in the same side of the bracket (meaning we have plenty of opportunities to root against Duke). There are higher seeded teams like eighth-seed Pittsburgh and ninth-seed Missouri that legitimately could make the Final Four. There are mid-majors like St. Louis, VCU and Creighton that can cause some major damage this year. And if we learned anything in the last three years, it’s that you can’t bet against Brad Stevens and sixth-seed team, Butler, under any circumstances.
Not that it really matters what any of us think will happen. Really, the less you know about college basketball, the better off you may be when predicting the brackets. Some years the bracket is all chalk (which means top seeds always win) and President Obama’s bracket will be way better than all of ours, and some years like in 2011, the final four will consist of a third, fourth, eighth, and 11th seed. Your bracket is as likely to unravel like a little kid eating a fruit roll-up as it is to strike gold on the first weekend.
As of now, I’m picking Louisville to win it all (who I swear was my choice before conference tournament week played out) while trying to find a way to skip all my classes for the first round on Thursday even though I have two tests that day. But it doesn’t matter to me if Louisville wins or not, because it’s not about the end result, but the journey along the way that makes the NCAA tournament so special.
Leading in today’s Crimson White:
Alabama students, alumni create popular web series
