Upsets, buzzer-beaters, bracket busters, heart-stopping close games and routs you don’t expect.
It’s madness I tell you!
Welcome to March Madness, the greatest (and for people like me, most frustrating) of all American sports. It’s the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, a month-long mad dash for teams trying to wind up in the Final Four. Unlike all other sports, it’s almost as satisfying for the players, coaches and fans to make it to the semifinals as it is to wining the whole thing.
And I, like millions of Americans, belong to a pool of friends (there are also office pools) who vie for our own title of March Madness Bracket King by predicting – before the first tipoff – which teams will win and advance to the Final Four and win the championship.
I am also terrible about it and now I know why my March Madness brackets always suck. Or so I think I have it figured out, anyway.
Each year, I fill out the bracket, pause, look at it and make a few changes, and hit Submit. I then sit back, arms stretched behind my head, and proclaim “I feel good about is – THIS is the year I win it all!”
But by the time the Thursday games get into evening play, my bracket has more lines through it than my high school math papers. I’m hanging on by a thread and by Saturday night it’s all over, my bracket busted and I am left saying time and time again, “why did I pick THAT team!?”
An annual March Madness ritual of mine is to rip up my bracket on the first Saturday and leave it on the floor of a sports bar. In 2022, I didn’t even make it out of the first day unscathed, having picked Kentucky to go the Final Four. The saving grace is, I’m not the only one who had the Wildcats winning several games.
The Challenges Of Filling Out A March Madness Bracket
These days it’s so tough to identify a Final Four team because they all have flaws. A lot of teams – even the blue bloods – are playing several freshmen because the NBA raids the talent each year, creating “one and done” players.
And no matter how much skill a freshman has, he’s still a freshman and it’s impossible for him to have consistency playing 40-something games a season when he didn’t play nearly that many in high school.
College basketball transfers are another reason for creating the madness that is March Madness. Coaches can’t create any team unity with so many new players coming in and going out of the program every year.
That is why there is no longer a dominant team, a clear winner who you can confidently put in that championship square.
Being In The Right Frame Of Mind When Filling Out A Winning Bracket
My biggest problem, I have determined, is that I am sober when I fill out the bracket. Before I sit down at the computer I need to have a few beers in my system. Some tequila shots, too.
That way, I am not influenced by silly things such as records, competition and matchups. I can just go with the flow and if I have no idea about mid-majors and small-conference teams, I can just take a “screw it” approach. Maybe I’ll go for the team with the best mascot or a particular color I like more than the other team. Or how about this one – the team with the best-looking cheerleaders!
And if I still suck, I have a handy excuse: “hey, I was drunk when I made the picks!”
The Big 10 Over-Seeding Dilemma
The Big 10 is always over-ranked and over-seeded in the tournament. So paying attention to the committee’s seeding and in particular the “experts” who attempt to analyze the teams and games is a recipe for having a bracket full of busters. Heck, they can have you convinced the conference should have every team in the Elite 8 and the Final Four.
The reality is that the teams aren’t that great to begin with and when they face outside competition they drop out of the bracket like a bowling ball off a table. Only one team, Wisconsin, seems to work its way through the bracket.
How many times has Purdue and Ohio State left you ripping up your bracket after too-early losses? Exactly.
Update: How many people had Iowa in the Final Four? Not me!
Those Damned Buzzer-Beaters
When a close game approaches the final minutes, several people in our pool race to check my pick and they say one of two things: “great!,” or “crap.”
That is because they know that I lose every single close game and buzzer-beater. I am cursed in this bad luck for some reason. I know it and they know it, too. So if they picked a different team than me they know they are going to win it, and if they picked the same team, well, they order another drink at the bar.
I also have an uncanny ability to know an upset is coming – that a team is going to be the “darlings of the tournament” – but I always seem to pick the wrong team. Instead of going to the Sweet 16, they are blown out in the first round. This is always good for a few laughs among my fellow pool participants.
A Few Things I Do Know About March Madness Teams
Some things I do know and here’s a few of them:
• Kansas will always lose around Elite 8 time. Never pick the Jayhawks to make the Final Four, let alone win the championship.
• Arizona either will lose in the first round or advance to the Elite 8 or even the Final Four. This year’s team has the potential to do either, therefore making the Zonies a really tough team to put high in your bracket.
• UCLA is never as good as a lot of its alumni think but it has a good coach who schools the team on playing hard with good D and that provides the “four letters” with Final Four potential. This is a team that can win a lot of close games.
• Don’t pick Alabama to advance past the Sweet 16. It’s never happened and it certainly won’t this year – the team has more turnovers than a danged pastry shop.
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