Recovering from Madness
Last March, when I was an overworked, perpetually sleep-deprived freshman, the college basketball tournament snuck up on me. I had caught the Big Ten tournament and had a general, fuzzy awareness that the championship was approaching, but with that workload, everything that wasn’t happening in the next six or seven hours seemed like a pinprick in the distance.
So when Selection Sunday, the day when the bracket for the elite tournament is set, arrived, I found myself completely ignorant. On one hand, it was more exciting, because I had no idea which teams were likely to grab the high seeds, but I also decided that familiarizing myself with the power conferences and teams ahead of time would have made the experience more enjoyable.
So that’s what I did this year. I kept track of every single conference’s tournaments, monitored the AP rankings, and pored over the online predictions on ESPN and Yahoo! Sports. But for all that preparation, the tournament was a major letdown.
Last year’s tournament was thrilling — riddled with upsets (Kansas was bounced in the first round by … Bradley?!; No. 1 Connecticut and No. 2 Tennessee barely escaped their first contests; overall No. 1 Duke ousted early) and host to an incredible run by No. 11 seed George Mason University, battling all the way to the Final Four.
This year, upsets were few and far between. Syracuse, a team I admired ever since they smacked Texas around in the first tournament I ever watched, was overlooked entirely, and the choice of the No. 1 seeds left a lot to be desired. Winthrop, a No. 11 seed, looked like it could be this year’s George Mason, but after an initial victory it was defeated by the ever-intimidating Oregon Ducks.
When only eight teams remained, seven were No. 1 or No. 2 seeds, and the No. 3 Ducks were the lowest-ranked. Compare that to last year: three No. 1 seeds, two No. 2 seeds, rounded out with a 3, 4, and 11. The Final Four: no No. 1 seeds.
I can see that a lot of people would look at those last few paragraphs and think, “Wow, who cares?” A fair question. Why do I care? Well, there are a combination of reasons I continue to tune in. One is probably an enthusiasm for brackets and rankings cultivated by my fourth- and fifth-grade devotion to “Battlebots,” another the Illinois team’s fantastic run during my subbie days. On a freezing April night, I was among a mob of orange-clad Illini fans in the parking lot of the U of I basketball complex until after midnight to welcome the oh-so-close team home.
Yes, sports is a pretty trivial thing to obsess over, but I don’t see any harm in it. For whatever reason, seeing your home team triumph against adversity can fill even the most casual viewer with excitement. Illinois vs. Arizona, anyone?
— Andrew Lovdahl