So here we are again.
The conference tournaments are just now starting. The mid-major teams are just beginning to be shown on TV. cbssportsline.com is just starting to write incorrect statements about college basketball.It is the beginning of the most exciting month in sports: March.
Yes, March Madness has returned.
Well, sort of.
Each year there are always 40 teams worthy of at large births, but only 32 get them. Last year, the biggest snub of all went to Utah State, who then laid an egg in the NIT (as we all know, the Not Invited Tournament). But this year, there are only about 25-30 at-large worthy teams heading into March.
And I don’t think enough of them will lose in the conference tournaments to allow there to be 32 worthy at-large teams.
Some less deserving team than last year’s Utah State will get in easily. Unless the committee makes a huge mistake, there won’t be a Utah State in 2005.
And still, everyone will complain that the committee was bad.
I can’t see a single storm cloud in the sky, but I sure can smell the rain.
But there is still a bubble with teams on it that would not have been on it last year.
Vermont? Davidson? West Virginia? Winthrop (just kidding)? Would any of these teams have beaten out last years Utah State? HELL NO!!! But this year, West Virginia and Vermont are currently on the nice side of the bubble.
Struggling teams like Iowa and North Carolina State have still not heard it pop. Heck, they can’t even smell the rain. Georgetown is still sitting pretty. Wichita State from a lower powerful conference has been slumping for a couple weeks and is still looking good to get in.
Gonzaga and St. Mary’s should both be in (but if you look at one of cbssportsline’s paid writers, they seem to think that the top two teams in the WCC Tournament don’t get byes, which they do).
The only team to have clinched is Penn (though one of cbssportsline’s paid writers seems to think there is an Ivy League Tournament).
Meanwhile, teams from the SWAC and MEAC are going to get in after their conference tournaments. It is very possible and maybe even probable that these teams will have losing or five hundred records (how the heck do those cbssportsline paid writers have paid writing jobs and I don’t).
And because these mediocre teams are going to get in, you know that you will hear the experts ask what they have done that Utah State failed to do last year.
I can’t see a single storm cloud in the sky, but I sure can smell the rain.
But then after all these teams get in, and the powers like Illinois and Kansas and North Carolina and Kentucky all get seeded, the tournament gets underway.
Nothing beats watching a fourteen seed in Penn knock off a three seed in Arizona. Isn’t it beautiful? Nothing beats watching a fifteen seed in Winthrop knock off a two seed in Kentucky. Isn’t it breathtaking? Nothing beats watching a sixteen seed in Portland State destroy a one seed in Boston College. Isn’t it about time?
This is what we live for. This is what we wait for.
This is March. This is upset central.
We don’t know who will win when or how, but we know there will be some major upset that keeps us tuned in this month.
We fill out our brackets. We take out a red pen. We cross off half the games because the upsets we picked did not come true and the upsets we could never have conceived do happen. We cross off our champion by the end of the second round. We don’t care. We wake up each morning, regardless of any thing else, and we work or relax or something until the games start.
I can’t see a single storm cloud in the sky, but I sure can smell the rain.
March is in like a lion and out like a lamb.
So will be Boston College.
Thank god for March.
