Twas the Night Before Madness

Tomorrow at approximately 12:15 Eastern, the Madness officially begins.  As you may have been able to tell, I get a little bit excited for the NCAA tournament.  I've been like this as long as I can remember.  In 1987, we were in Morocco for the Final Four (pretty standard), and we didn't have a VCR at home, so my dad asked his friend to tape the national title game, and then we borrowed their VCR and the tape after we got back so we could watch it.  In 1989, I started keeping a bracket updated with the results throughout the tournament (which I have done every year since).  In seventh or eighth grade, I entered my first pool.  It was $1 a bracket.  The only time I ever ditched high school, I shit you not, was to watch the first round of the NCAA tournament.  It is, after all, the greatest three weeks in sports.  Perhaps the reason why it is so great is that it is a one-and-done tournament.  If you lose one game, you go home.  Other than the NFL, there aren't any similar playoff set-ups in the pros or the two major D-1 sports (football and basketball), but what makes the NCAA tournament even more exciting than the NFL playoffs is that there are 63 games (rather than 11) and these are college kids, with a finite amount of time in which they have a chance to play in the NCAA tournament.  If the Patriots lose in the Super Bowl, Tom Brady can possibly win the Super Bowl next year.  If a senior loses in the NCAA tournament, he will never play the NCAA tournament again.

Anyway, that leads me into three good articles I read this week about the tournament.  The first is from a Wall Street Journal blog, written by an IU grad living in Hong Kong who is doing everything she can to keep up with the Hoosiers.  (Thanks to Miller Time for the link.)  The second is from the New York Times, entitled "What Your NCAA Tournament Bracket Says About You."  Mine says I'm probably wrong.  The third is from the Onion about this year's IU team.  It is pretty much spot-on.

As you may know, since the field was expanded to 64 teams in 1985, no #16 seed has ever beaten a #1 seed.  In fact, a #16 seed has lost by 5 points or less only 5 times (and not in 16 years): (1) Michigan beat Farleigh Dickinson 59-55 in 1985; (2) Georgetown beat Princeton 50-49 in 1989 (a game I remember watching); (3) Oklahoma beat East Tennessee State 72-71 in 1989; (4) Michigan State beat Murray State 75-71 in 1990; (5) Purdue beat Western Carolina 73-71 in 1996 (one of the games I watched while ditching school).  This is all set to change.  I had a dream Sunday night that a #1 seed lost to a #16 seed.  I couldn't tell what team lost, but at least one team playing had blue in its jersey, which means it could be any of the 1 vs. 16 matchups except Michigan State vs. LIU.  My grandma used have premonitions in dreams, whether it was about someone dying or pick 3 lottery numbers.  Basically, if she had a dream that you died, the grim reaper was about to tap you on the shoulder.  If I have even a smidgen of her psychic abilities, then Kentucky, Syracuse, and North Carolina better be on upset alert.  Please keep this in mind as you are filling out your brackets, and don't say I didn't warn you.