I love the madness of March

I love March madness. This is the best month of the year. It is the month of the NCAA Tournament and all the conference tournaments. The NCAA Tournament is the greatest sports event known to man. The conference tournaments are important because the winner of all 30 tournaments get an automatic bid to the field of 65. Only the Ivy League awards its regular season champion the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The rest of the field is the 34 best at-large teams sectioned by the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee. Just to let you know that there are 341 Division I schools for the committee to chose from. The very best thing about the NCAA tournament is the upsets that can happen. Any thing can happen. Just think about George Mason getting to the Final Four in 2006. Any one can win on any given day. It’s one game not a best-of-three or best-of-seven series. As Dick Vitale says it’s “survive and advance”. There is nothing like it in the world. Also I like that the hype lasts only three days and Tuesday you get a taste of things to come with the Opening Round game between the two worst teams with. The winner of this game moving on to face number one seed overall North Carolina in the First Round. The main course starts at noon on Thursday and goes all night and we do it all over again on Friday. The second round on the weekend is the same thing.

This maybe the most balanced field in a long time. Any of about ten teams can win this tournament. I will not pick a winner because of all the variables I mentioned above and the fact that I’m not very good at that. One of my brackets is always a mess after this weekend. A few thoughts on this year’s tournament are: Why is Kentucky in the field of 65? They were 18-12 overall, 12-4 in the SEC, lost in the Quarterfinal to Georgia in the Conference tournament. One of their loses was to Gardner-Webb. I know this loss was early in the season but come on; I thought the committee looks at non-conference games a little more then this. This has to be one of the most interesting decisions in a while. I don’t see them getting past Marquette in the first round. The game in the Midwest regional between USC and Kansas State will feature two of the most talked about freshman in the country: O.J Mayo from USC and Michael Beasley from Kansas State. My sleeper pick for the whole tournament is Georiga. After winning the SEC tournament and playing four games in three days because of a tornado hitting Atlanta and postponing their Quarterfinal until Saturday, they had to play two games in one day; won them both and then won the final on Sunday to get in to the NCAA tournament. Just remarkable!

I will write on Monday a post first and second round review.