Best Month of the Year

There is no better time of the year than sports in March. It is incredible. The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is the obvious, but baseball season begins to get under way and golf has the Master's as well. The month of March and the first week or two of April are by far the best of the year. Week 3 in April brings us the NFL Draft, which is more front office entertainment reserved for a special kind of nerd (like myself). It does not count.

March Madness has lived up to its name this season. Morons like Jay Bilas who want nothing more than 64 big "establishment approved" schools in the tourney have been left peeing down their leg watching these games, and I love it.

There have been upsets that were, but there have also been almost upsets. Sam Houston State was playing with Baylor for nearly the entire game, with Baylor pulling away late. Robert Morris should have beaten Villanova. Nothing would have made the big school lovers cringe more than Robert Morris taking down Villanova, I'm hoping that today St. Mary's pulls off the feat and eliminates them. Well wait, there was one thing that could make them cringe more......

Ohio (not Ohio State) took down Georgetown, I don't think Bilas slept a wink Thursday night in between cries after that shot in the nuts. Ouch..... Ohio is a team that finished ninth in a mid-major conference, and had to get hot in their "mediocre" conference's tournament and swing an automatic bid. The world chalked Georgetown up as an easy winner and allowed all of the "Kansas got the worst draw in the tourney talk" heat up because Georgetown, Ohio State, Michigan State, and Tennessee are all "establishment approved" schools. Well, someone forgot to tell the ninth seed in the MAC (who went 7-9 in their conference) that they are supposed to curl up in the fetal position at mid-court and let the established schools give it to them.

And on to Kansas, who is my obvious barometer for the season for a few teams. Temple played KU earlier this season and got rolled. A few days later, the Big Red Machine of Cornell went into Allen Fieldhouse and beat KU. Well, the refs said otherwise, but the Big Red won that game. What happened this weekend? Cornell rolled Temple. Now Cornell has Wisconsin coming up, and Cornell will move on.

Butler got a 5 seed even though they were a Top 10 team in the nation much of the season. How could Georgetown be ranked 22 and get a 3 seed while Butler who's been in the Top 10 gets a 5 seed. Murray State pulled off a little magic against Vandy, but I don't know that it will continue against a Butler team who is ready to go to the Sweet 16 and give Syracuse a run for their money.

Finally, for the establishment folks who continue to say the Big East is the best conference in America comes results in the opening round. They continue to ignore data such as the RPI rankings that say the Big 12 is better, they ignore that 50% of the Big East's teams got in the tourney while 58% of the Big we teams got in. Opening round, the Big East won 50% of their games while the Big 12 won 71% of their games. Georgetown and Notre Dame lost to Mid-majors, while Marquette and Louisville lost to two teams from the underachieving PAC 10 conference. The Big 12 saw a stumbling Texas team lose and Oklahoma State lose a game that went down to the wire against a team that made the ACC Championship game. Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, and Texas A&M all took care of business and Missouri upset a very solid ACC team.

Hopefully the two biggest trends thus far in the tournament continue: the mid-majors handling the majors and the Big 12 continuing dominance. Sunday's game between Missouri and West Virginia will be interesting. Mizzou is a 10 seed from the Big 12, has very poor perimeter shooting, and even worse rebounding. They play good defense and hope for easy buckets. West Virginia won the Big East conference tournament. If West Virginia does not take care of business against Mizzou, it will be the final nail in the Big East's coffin in this tournament.

It's getting exciting. It's March, should I expect any less?