Tournament Talk #1

Can everyone stop slapping hands with the free throw shooter on every single shot?! It's stupid and it's gotten so bad they'll do it on MISSES. Knock it off already.

Now to business. This hasn't been the craziest tournament in recent memory but it is living up to the name. Madness. How you say? Several things combine to bring an atmosphere of excitement you cannot find anywhere else. The NBA playoffs don't quite compare, there's a much greater element of predictability there. More talent certainly but the Wizards aren't taking down the Heat in 5 games as a #7 or #8 seed. In the tourney #14 and #15 seeds regularly knock off #3's and #2's (#14 Mercer stunned blue-blood Duke, although no #15's have gotten through this year), and it is only a matter of time before a #1 goes down to a #16. Parity is the wrong word to apply to the field but the sample size is so large it introduces an almost limitless variables. No team in this field is so talented and experienced to dominate. #10 seed Stanford beats #2 Kansas in the second round, a team that habitually starts many one-and-done freshman, limiting the team's experience. Regular season conference action is so competitive a national champ returning several starting players can lose #5 regular season games and get stuck with a #4 seed. These guys are young and hungry and play with such intensity and abandon just when a team looks unbeatable they stumble. At times they will squeak out wins against lower seeds, appear vulnerable, then go on to win big against a more storied program.  Traders love volatility and so do tourney fans like myself. I'm all about the Cinderellas. Wichita State or Creighton don't qualify but it's time to see another non-major conference school win it all!

Three schools each from Kansas and Oklahoma made the dance. They are 1-5 with Oklahoma kicked out of the Union and Wichita looking very good to go all the way. Both NM majors were in, and now they're out too.

Finally, chickens had a good year in basketball. Chickens? That's right, the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers made the field (that's some sort of rooster). And they didn't have to be lonely. They had the Delaware Blue Hens to comfort them after both were sent home in the first round. So much for mascots that strike fear in the hearts of opponents.