Good Mornin’! Good Mornin’!
Each year, millions of dreamers print out their NCAA March Madness Bracket and work to decipher an eventual winner from the 68 teams selected to compete. And each year, millions of those brackets are busted after one round, most after two rounds and by now we’re all lucky to have guessed if a Number 12 could actually survive and advance.
It’s fun to try. At least the first few times. I used to actually do both the men’s and women’s brackets and the years I was closer to my college experience I seem to have done much better. Now with life happening most every day it’s hard to keep up with the doings of all 68 teams and try to make an educated guess of what these teenage boys and girls will do under the NCAA spotlight. Legends are born, dreams are crushed and somebody has that One Shining Moment to hold on to the rest of their lives. The rest of us will smile and grumble about the season that could have been but never was.
My problem is I pick games with my heart and not my head. Growing up a North Carolina and UCLA fan, those teams automatically advance in my bracket no matter the season they actually had. And for those teams that are despised – any Big 10/Little 14 schools, Valparaiso and Jimmy Boeheim at Syracuse – all are picked against for no other reason than I do not like them.
That strategy has busted just about every bracket I’ve attempted to fill out. But hey, it’s my bracket and I know what I like and what I don’t like so don’t try and get me to change my mind this late in life. It’d be nice if the Rebels could find their way back to basketball excellence but for some reason there just doesn’t seem to be enough great basketball players to go around these days.
The Ole Miss Lady Rebels finally made it back to the Big Dance only to show two left feet and no rhythm on the post season parquet. Moral victories are nice for a few minutes but no one remembers them in a week or so. I’d like to hang onto our coach for a while because I believe she’s building a winner and doing it from a great foundation. We need to get back to the days of beating those Lady Bulldogs like a drum during the Coach Van Chancellor years. But he had some elite players in the Gillom sisters, Eugenia Conner, Alicia Scott and dozens more. Once we get that pipeline of players coming back and coming to, we’ll be just fine and that elusive Final Four and eventual National Championship will come home to Oxford.
A man can dream, can’t he?
In the meantime, I’ll keep filling out brackets and trying to find time to watch a few games, learn a few player names and see that One Shining Moment.
