It's a mad, mad, mad March Madness

I knew this was going to be an unpredictable NCAA men’s basketball tournament when, on the first day of March Madness, my wife issued words that I swear I never, ever expected to come out of her mouth. She was actually sitting and watching highlights of Morehead State upsetting Louisville when, observing the game-winning shot, my wife turned to me and said, incredibly, “Did you see that guy drain that 3-point shot?” Mind you the only time I have ever heard my wife use the word “drain” in a sentence it was usually accompanied with an order to fix something. But my wife has discovered what March Madness is about. Last year our sons and I convinced her to fill out a NCAA tournament bracket with us. The idea was to educate her about March Madness while at the same time better explaining our obsession of watching so many basketball games on all days and times of the week in March. We figured she just might get it. Well, if North Carolina had beaten Kentucky today in the last Elite Eight game of the weekend, she would have won our family-of-four tournament pool. She would have drained it. As it is, my 18-year-old son has won it, even though he doesn’t have one single team in the Final Four in his bracket. Who knew? On February 3, Butler had a 14-9 record and a three-game losing streak after losing to an 8-14 Youngstown State team. They had as much chance of getting to the championship game again as Hickory High in “Hoosiers.” On February 3, VCU was coming off a loss to an 8-15 Northeastern team. At that time, they really deserved to get ripped by ESPN experts Dick Vitale and Jay Bilas who thought VCU belonged in the NCAA tournament about as much as USSR. On February 3, Kentucky was in the midst of losing four games in a seven-game span and had been defeated by an Ole Miss team that was 1-5 at the time in the SEC. The Wildcats had their eyes affixed to getting into the NBA before the NCAA tournament. On February 3, UConn lost a home game to Syracuse to fall to 5-4 in the Big East Conference en route to a No. 9 seed in the Big East Tournament where the Huskies had a six-game losing streak. On April 3, two of the above-mentioned teams will be preparing to play in the NCAA Division I men’s basketball national championship game. Who knew?