March Madness

Apparently my dog, Amos, was not impressed with Creighton’s performance against UNC.  Either that, or he’s just exhausted after 4 full days of watching TV, haha.  Every year, my buddy Chris and I get together to watch the first 4 days of the NCAA tournament.  We started watching it together in college, and 12 years later, we still make it a point to get together every year.  We always take the Thursday and Friday off of work, and either I travel to L.A. or he flies up here to the Bay Area.  We just post up and watch literally every game for 4 straight days, 12 hours a day.  It sounds crazy, but it’s just always been something that we enjoy doing, and it gives us an excuse to get together and see each other.  It’s become a nice tradition and gives me something to look forward to during some of the dreary winter months.  This year featured probably one of the craziest tournament days in NCAA history, with two different 15-seeds beating 2-seeds.  Lehigh beat Duke (!!) and Norfolk St. took down Missouri.  I certainly wasn’t happy about that, since I had Mizzou in the final 4, but it was definitely something new and exciting since a 15-seed had only beat a 2-seed like 4 times ever in the history of the tournament, and then it happened twice in one day!  One of the other highlights was the 2nd round game of Murray St. vs. Marquette – that game featured so much foot speed on either side, and it was super exciting to watch them run up and down.  I thought Murray St. would make it to the Sweet 16, but they couldn’t get past Marquette.  I was also impressed with how Gonzaga hung with Ohio St. – they looked very solid, and probably could have advanced further if they hadn’t gotten such a tough draw with Ohio St. as their 2nd round matchup.  One of the biggest heart breakers was my local boys, St. Marys College from Moraga, CA, losing to Purdue when one of the St. Mary’s players made a mental mistake by traveling while out-of-bounds (running the baseline) on an in-bounds play.  They were up by 1 point with 30 seconds left and all they had to do was maintain possession and shoot free throws to win it.  He forgot that you can only run the baseline after a made basket.  That is like an 8th grade mistake, and I felt so bad for him because I know he’s never going to let himself live that down.  On the other side of the ball, I was happy for Robbie Hummel of Purdue to see him advance a little bit in the NCAA tourney.  He’s blown out his ACL in two separate past seasons, so this is literally his 6th season playing for Purdue.  It was nice to see him make a comeback and still be a dominant college player.  All in all, it was yet another great first weekend of NCAA tourney games, and I can’t wait for next year.