It's madness!!

Every time March rolls around my love for college basketball is once again renewed. When I was in middle and high school I was a tad bit, let's say, obsessed with college basketball going so far as to tape the games I wanted to watch while I was at the high school games that I was a statistician for. It didn't matter if I somehow heard the outcome of the game in advance, I would still sit there and watch the game unfold. I couldn't get enough.

I lived for basketball season and was happiest when we had an away Friday night game and we won. The bus ride home was always a party and sometimes we even got to stop at McDonald's! It was the simple things then...Now, if we lost, we had to be completely silent on the way home and stopping was completely out of the question. In those days, the only downside was if I, a high and mighty stat, had to sit with a cheerleader on the bus. There were only two cheerleaders who I could tolerate as they were good friends of mine, but we both understood that things were different when they donned their pleated skirts. Some of my absolute best memories from high school involve the boys from the team, my fellow stats and the overnight trips we got to go on each season. And as our season wound down at the end of February, I knew I had March Madness waiting for me, just around the corner.

I found myself planted on the couch for several hours this weekend, taking in one game after another. I haven't kept up with basketball of late, so I don't have a "team", but that doesn't mean I didn't have someone to cheer for. As each new game came on, I would run through a rather muddled set of criteria in my head and decide who to root for. More often than not, I would go with the underdog, but not always. Sometimes it would be decided by who I didn't want to win. I'm telling you it's a complicated process I go through choosing who should win or not. Let's just say that I have in the past cheered for a team because one of the players had a ridiculous last name and I liked saying it, so I hoped they would keep winning so I could keep watching and saying his name.

Despite being somewhat out of touch with the sport as a whole, there are still teams that I, well, despise. Take Duke for example- can't stand them. Don't know where the initial dislike came from, but it runs deep and I was so happy when they got out in the first round. Like, do a happy dance, happy. Which I did not do as we had company, but I did it in my heart.

The games were interrupted this weekend because good friends of ours were married on Saturday. But I wasted no time yesterday getting back into it. I spent a lovely Sunday afternoon getting my fill of the game, yelling at the TV and using all my best b-ball vocab like pick-and roll, double bonus and full court press. It was a great weekend with several really good games. Can't wait til next weekend when we get to do it all again, when the stakes are higher and the games will be even better!