March Madness... and I'm mad

It is such a good thing that I do not have TV right now... seriously I don't. One of those sacrifices you make to empower a dream like owning your first home. And I love my home. My wife loves it and the boys do too...

However, the Evil Genius of Sport (EGOS) is in MAJOR sports withdrawl at the present time with the onset of March Madness and spring training. Thank goodness for the internet - including the occasional live broadcast of the Madness via www.sportsline.com

Spring training is that beautiful time of year when hope springs eternal, championship dreams are born, prosects become big-leaguers for a couple of weeks, and the most boring brand of baseball you've ever seen is played (see: 10 inning TIES). That is unless you're a Red Sox fan and your team has sold out over 55 spring training games in a row - hopefully NOT the most impressive stat for the year. But first the REAL attraction of the month of March... the Madness.

When the tournament brackets were announced, I actually thought that the committees actually did a better than normal job... with a few obvious exceptions:

MEN
1. Being at .500 in the ACC should NOT automatically qualify you for the Big Dance. Please don't anyone tell me that Georgia Tech belonged.

2. Show some guts and pick at least ONE team from the SEC West winners (the Mississippi schools)... talk about a league that beat itself up.

3. The Air Force Academy absolutely belonged in the field this year. These guys have a more rigorous schedule than ANY team in the country AND they play top notch hoops. Just think about what happens when they are allowed to focus purely on basketball like the other big conference boys... best example: look at what they're doing in the NIT. OUCH. #5 seed material.

WOMEN:
1. As much as I hate the UConn Huskies, they deserved the easier road to the Final Four than the UNC TarHeels - but then we've got to worship the ACC right? Gosh that gets old. And don't even THINK of talking about the Tennessee/UConn favoritism angle - that lasted right up until 1999 (when UT and UConn stopped COMPLETELY dominating the sport, but people STILL think they imagine that it exists).

2. Tennessee DID deserve a tougher road thanks to losing to Duke, UNC, and the LSU in the SEC tourney semis... but they didn't deserve to have the ENTIRE allotment of mis-seeded teams in the brackets lumped in with them:

2a. #2 seed Maryland - the defending champs with all 5 starters on the Naismith POTY list
2b. #3 seed Oklahoma - a surefire #2 seed instead of Purdue and with arguably the most physically dominant player in the country in Courtney Paris.
2c. #4 seed Ohio State - another All-American led team with Jessica Davenport.
2d. A rather predictable pattern that pits them against the best big girls in the country in a year that size is not their strength.
2e. #5 seed MTSU - a higher seed than this team with the longest winning streak in the country probably merited, but they are the hottest team in the nation - regardless.
2f. #7 seed Mississippi - as if they needed to make the bracket tougher, they put a #6 seed at WORST in at #7 and where do they put them? Hmmm...

3. They screwed up the playing sites... lower seeds should NEVER play on their home court. And if ANYONE plays on their home court it should be the higher seeds. But NEVER past the 1st and 2nd rounds.

Now on to the games...

For the most part, despite the closeness of many of the games this year, it has actually been a pretty boring tournament on both sides of the ledger. No buzzer-beaters to speak of, no huge upsets (except #13 seed Marist women), and really no dream matchups materializing into instant classics.

I thought Texas A&M got robbed when the officials took a full 1.1 of the remaining 3 seconds off the clock during a slam-bang out-of-bounds play. That should not happen in tourney play. Of course neither should a scorching hot Tennessee team let Ohio State score 53 points in the second half WITHOUT Greg Oden on the floor for more than half the game. We were robbed by our own stupidity... and with a chance to play a Memphis team we'd already beaten once for the chance to go all the way to the Final Four. Now we're yet ANOTHER Tennessee team without a signature tounament win to boost recruiting.

Thankfully the Lady Vols haven't blown THEIR 20 point leads - and I think they have 3 more in them if they can avoid the poor shooting that has plagued them this year. Duke's women are out early AGAIN, but the team we're gonna have to get past this year is UNC, assuming we get past the tournament's hottest teammates in Ole Miss's Arminite Price and Ashley Awkward.

Time will tell...