March Madness

      Every year the sports world looks forward to third week in March.  A phenomena that grips the attention of those who hardly watch a half of college basketball the entire season.  It seems like everyone you run into asks about your bracket.  Every season you tell yourself this your year.  The perfect bracket created by the bracket master, one bracket to dominate them all.  It only takes until two o'clock Thursday afternoon for that mindset to change.  Rarely can one go from hero to zero in such a small time.  March Madness is exactly that, madness.
     This year's March action has not disappointed, either.  A first round riddled with upsets as usual.  The biggest being the defeat of the Michigan State Spartans, a two seed, by fifteen seed Middle Tennessee State.  A fifteen seed has won their opening round game only times in the long history of the NCAA Tournament.  The Spartans were a favorite pick by many experts, in fact, I had them in my championship.  After two days my bracket found itself in the trash.  Not many predicted the Ivy League champs Yale to defeat a five seed Baylor Bears.  A game Yale dominated.
     The first round is not where the Madness stopped, however.  Northern Iowa was fresh off of a half court buzzer beater upset over Texas and looked poised to continue that trend over Texas A&M.  The Aggies from College Station thought different.  Down twelve with 44 seconds left in the game, the Aggies pulled off one of the craziest comebacks in sports history.  Or maybe it was of the biggest chokes in sports history.  I tend to lean towards the latter, but that's just college basketball in March.
     Even the elite eight saw its fair share of upsets.  Ten seed Syracuse, who many think is lucky for even getting invited to the Tourney this year, managed to topple the one seeded Virginia Cavaliers and make it to the Final Four.  On the other side of the bracket both two seeds, Oklahoma and Villanova, outlasted their respective one seeds to punch their tickets to the Final Four.  In fact, only one one seed made it the Final Four, the North Carolina Tar Heels.  The school that has the most Final Four appearances with 19.  This weekend in Houston promises to be an action packed weekend.  Admittedly, I hope to see the Sooners cutting the nets down on Monday night.  Maybe Syracuse can be the first ever ten seed could pull it off.  Or maybe the dynasty will continue with the Tarheels.  We'll just have to tune in to see.  It's going to be Madness.