READY FOR THE SWEET 16

This year I discovered the secret to March Madness:  Fill Out A Bracket.  Simply go online and plug and chug your tournament picks.  Gone are the days of penciling in your picks for the office pool with Bob the Accountant whipping out his slide rule to make the tabulations.  HERE are the days of ESPN.com where 4 million folks all compete with one another with the near mathematical impossibility of picking all the winners. 

The great thing is it’s not even a competition.  The more picks you get wrong, the greater the March Madness.

Take this year’s Sweet 16 (for the uninitiated-  the 16 teams that remain after the main pool of 64).  I picked only 6 of the 16 teams.  Pitiful, right?  No!  This is the whole point.  The more you suck, the better.  And the more random the upset you predict, the more brilliant your reputation becomes.  Suddenly you are an intuitive sage who knew Florida State (seeded 10^th out of 16), Virginia Commonwealth (11) and Richmond (12) would be joining Kansas as the 4 teams remaining in the Southwest region.

In the SE Regional, I didn’t pick Butler to advance, yet their controversial last second win over #1 seed Pitt was the biggest jump-off-the-sofa moment of the tourney. After all, it was a rare bracket that didn’t have Pitt in its Final Four. It was Pitt aka Goliath had guys who looked like professional wrestlers and/or hitmen, and Butler’s tallest player might have been 6’4”*. Butler’s best player from last year’s national runner up team is long gone & playing for the Utah Jazz. No one expected more than a rebuilding year for their 34y old coach who looks 24.  Although their Sweet 16 game against Wisconsin might elicit snoozes, how great would it be to see Butler back in the Elite Eight against Florida or BYU.

Speaking of BYU, if you haven’t seen Jimmer Fredette catch and shoot the ball, the kid actually levitates.  Can’t wait to see him in the NBA as he redefines the word sharpshooter.  I expect him to start draining shots consistently from halfcourt.  He may look about 5’8” out there on the court, but as Doug Flutie, Drew Breese and John Stockton can all attest, more inches are not mandatory for success in professional sports.

Other Blips on the Sweet 16 Radar: 

• Hopefully Ohio State got their insane 3 Pt shot % out of their system. 
• Hopefully Duke and UNC (the greatest rivalry in all of college sports) will meet in the Final Four.
• Maybe even San Diego State will swagger into the Elite Eight (I doubt it guys, Huskies devour Aztecs, but hey, go for it). 
• Will Virginia Commonwealth actually upset Kansas if they can get through Florida State without multiple player hospitalizations from that backbreaking Seminole Defense?

These are but a mere smattering of larger universal questions of the Basketball Gods that will be answered by this week’s 12 games, starting TH with UConn/SDSU in Anaheim.

Onward.

--Reported by SK

*Butler’s tallest player is the highly skilled Matt Howard at 6’8”, I was just making a dramatic point about the overmatched Butler Bulldogs.