Looking to escape March Madness NCAA Tournament Bracket Sadness? Go to Hawaii
After too many maniacal years of having my NCAA men’s
basketball tournament bracket busted as often as a Kardashian boyfriend I devised
a new March Madness strategy this year.
I went to Hawaii.
Aloha means goodbye to tearing up my bracket and
tearing the hair out of my head. Farewell, Bracketology. Hello, Fantasy
Basketball.
Without a care in the world, I leisurely filled out this year’s bracket during a five-hour
flight to Honolulu and then placed my tray table back in the upright and locked
position. My only visual source of tournament information was the sports
section from Tuesday’s USA Today with two full pages of the breakdown of each
team in the four tournament regions. It was so refreshing. Hmmmmm … Utah State
vs. Washington? Flight attendant, bring me another mai tai and bag of peanuts.
I’m going off line for this decision.
Gone
was the stress of assessment. Hours spent combing through Internet stories deducing,
predicting, imploring upsets galore, sleeper teams, and dark horses. I used to
sit down at the dinner table on the Monday night prior to the start of the NCAA
Division I men’s basketball tournament with the sport sections of multiple
newspapers laid out like so many condiments, thumbing through page after page
of printed material looking for a nugget to push my pencil up or down one line
in search of the utopian of upset picks.
This,
of course, after trying to watch every post-season conference tournament game
to decipher which teams were truly peaking and which teams were merely cruising
to the Dance and playing me for a fool. In a word I was obsessed.
This
year the only NCAA basketball game I watched from start to finish all season
involved the Dominican University of California Penguins women’s basketball
team. I saw more of Natalie Diaz than Zion Williamson. Natalie never blew up a Nike.
So
when Selection Sunday came and went, I listened intently but not intensely to
the gospel of the college basketball experts – the know-it-all talking heads
from Jay Bilas to Dickie V. – who watch basketball like porn. I drew my own
conclusion which was: For everyone that likes a Wofford, there is somebody that
likes a Seton Hall just as much. For all the paralysis by analysis in the end
it’s a simple coin flip. So I vowed I was not going to flip out if the team I
picked to win missed or surrendered a game-winning shot at the buzzer.
This
year, it didn’t matter. I was in Hawaii
where the first-round games tipped off locally at 7 o’clock in the morning. Why
stuff my butt on a condo sofa and agonize over every errant shot and stupid
turnover when I could walk outside to a beach and watch the sunrise?
Are
you feeling me? Life was a cocktail umbrella, not the perfect bracket.
Hence,
words I did not speak in Hawaii: “Honey, can we put off going to dinner at
Duke’s so I can watch Duke’s game against North Dakota State? You see nothing,
absolutely nothing, keeps me from Hula Pie, not even the prospect of another 12
seed beating a five seed or someone playing to be Cinderella.
So
while I drove the North Shore and walked Wakiki Beach and hung out at the Aulani
Disney Resort, they played 48 basketball games in my time in the 49th
state. I didn’t see Donald Duck, but I didn’t see an Oregon Duck either.
But
you know what? This is the most relaxed I have ever been during March Madness
and it showed. I was right about Murray State beating Marquette and UC Irvine
beating Kansas State. I went 13-3 on the first day of the tournament and 14-2
over the weekend. Fourteen of the teams I picked for the Sweet 16 got there,
including my Final Four.
Aloha,
Hawaii, my NCAA tournament bracket bliss.
As they say there, A’a i ka hula, waiho i ka maka’u i ka hale. Dare to dance,
leave shame at home.
3 Comments:
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