Clutch City

The madness

I planned to write this and many others before it, but many things (most of which involve being a degenerate gambler...or at least some form of a degenerate) have putten this off for far too long now. Anyway, the recent theme has obviously been March Madness. I guess people in my inner circle would probably say that I have had March Madness for some 20 plus years now. When did it all start? I honestly have no answer for that question. It may or may not have to do with the fact the my date of birth happens to fall in what is normally the first few days of the NCAA Tournament, March 18. I can also tell you that at some point a lot of my other friends turned to other more "normal" hobbies and some just graduated to total squares altogether. Yet I for some reason have continued to go back to this little 94 feet getaway every night for over two thirds of my life.


For someone that has the madness like this, March is really like Christmas. Hell, even for the novice basketball fan March is like Christmas. People with small ties to schools they graduated from or lived near growing up have something to cheer for. People who live for underdog stories have to love March Madness, especially some of the more recent ones. Then of course, there are the brackets, the sheets of integrity as Mike and Mike so eloquently have referred to them as. By the end of the first weekend, most of us are usually kicking ourselves for not realizing Lehigh had a team that was clearly capable of beating this Duke team. Or you will be bragging about all the underdogs you correctly picked all the while forgetting that top seeds lose early and often sometimes. That's why they call it Madness and that's why there is always next year.

Being a Kansas fan (I know it's random, but that's for another day), next year is something I have come to know all too well.  Well except for that time I drank sixty ounces of beer in an hour and passed out at halftime...Anyway, I am really not sure what it is about this team that is so hard to get them motivated this time of year.  Maybe it is the fact that they almost always end up paired with such random schools for the first round or two, sometimes even three.  I was not of the opinion that this was one of the better KU teams I had followed in my two decades following this random school.  Yet, somehow they have hung around all season long.  It was around the time they came back from double digits to beat Missouri that I thought this team might be something special.  I am not expecting much more from them after this and honestly I am happy with that.  A spot as one of the Elite Eight teams is definitely something to be proud of, even if it was somewhat gift wrapped this year for Kansas.  Bill Self has certainly had his troubles opening up presents from the NCAA commitee in the last decade.

This has been a great tournament so far, with quite a few suprises that no doubt left a lot of brackets busted.  Yet somehow with all of these shockers and newfound household names, there has yet to be a single buzzer beater in this tournament.  I don't know where to look that sort of information up, but I definitely intend to.   Hopefully someone else is already saving me the trouble with that one! 

Being that I have been so up and down picking games this tournament, I am going to post my picks after the Final Four field is set in stone.  Until then....