March Madness - Black Thursday

The entire college basketball season is simply a prelude to March Madness! Unlike college football, college basketball crowns a true national champion through its 65-team single-elimination NCAA college basketball tournament. The excitement starts to build with the conference tournaments and then the Selection Sunday announcement of the 65 teams in the tournament field, the brackets and the seeding within the brackets, and of course the perennial discussions of the bubble teams (and this year the discussion of increasing the size of the tournament to 96 teams!).

My two alma maters, Georgetown and Vanderbilt, were both shoo-ins for the tournament so there was no holding your breath to see if they would make the field. Georgetown was the no. 3 seed in the Midwest bracket, and Vanderbilt was the no. 4 seed in the West bracket. It looked like Georgetown had a good chance to reach the Elite Eight before running into Kansas, the no. 1 seed in the tournament, and Vandy would play Syracuse, the no. 1 seed in its bracket, in the Sweet 16. Both played there opening round games on Thursday against two mid-major teams.

First, Vandy ran into the juggernaut called the Murray State Racers. The Racers have a record of 31 wins and 4 losses, playing in the mid-major Ohio Valley Conference. The Racers are also riding a streak of 23 consecutive winning seasons. The mid-majors always seem to play well in the NCAA Tournament. The powerhouse conferences may not take them as seriously as they should and the mid-majors have a chip on their shoulders. This lethal combination oftentimes leads to an early round upset. In this case, the Racers beat the Commodores 66 - 65 on a buzzer beater by Danero Thomas. Buzzer beaters are so deflating because one moment you think you are going to survive to play the next round and the next moment your season and maybe your college career is over.

Then Georgetown played Ohio University from the mid-major Mid-American Conference (not THE Ohio State University!). Ohio University had a record of 21 wins and 14 losses and only got a ticket to March Madness by winning the conference tournament, but it was riding a 6-game winning streak. Ohio University had season losses to the likes of Marshall, Austin Peay and Akron twice! Georgetown started the season very strong and tapered off toward the end of the season. Georgetown had signature wins against Duke, Syracuse and Villanova, two of the no. 1 seeds and a no. 2 seed in the tournament. The Hoyas looked lackadaisical and mechanical from the start of the game and never found its rhythm. Georgetown trailed from the outset, were losing 48-36 at halftime, and lost by 14 points, 97 to 83. The Hoyas never got closer than 9 points and they simply whimpered home. In this case, the players had 40 minutes to realize that this was the end of their season and it did not look like they could do a thing about it!

If Black Thursday was not bad enough, how is this for piling on ... this is the lead sentence from an internet article about the number of people watching live streaming video of Thursday's first round of March Madness: "Initial stats are in for NCAA March Madness on Demand and it looks like CBSSports.com will be able to declare victory again (unlike fans of Georgetown or Vanderbilt)." Ouch, that is just beating a guy when he is down!