Preparing to March into Madness

Time to get your College Basketball on…March Madness is near!

The NCAA Tournament, which has reduced the NIT in Madison Square Garden into a mere consolation event, is upon us.

Current students will show off their body painting expertise and Alumni will proudly wear their school’s apparel on national television.

The Dance is a mad, mad race for the NCAA Basketball Title and every team will have a shot!

There will be Giant Division I Basketball Teams seeded at the top of the tournament brackets like always, and… like always, Cinderella Teams will be hunting them down like that attractive girl hunts Zombies on the Resident Evil movie.

It’s inevitable…Giants will fall!

Coaches will preach and preach to their players,

“…be ready!“, until they’re sick in their stomachs,

but chances are that if their teams see any Cinderella team coming their way…it’s too late! That Cinderella has already slayed a Giant, it’s full of confidence and it’s coming with intentions of slaying them next. The Main Stream Media does like to label these Basketball Teams Cinderellas, but really they’re not.

What are they, then?

Well, they’re very well coached teams and lot of them have two or more players which weren’t highly recruited by Division I or Mid-Major Basketball Programs. These guys traded their slippers for steel toe work boots a long time ago, are highly motivated and have been playing together for a while. March Madness is their shot at the Giant programs which ignored them during recruiting and they will be coming for their pound of flesh.

Last season Wichita State, LaSalle and Florida Gulf Coast were huge Crashers at every March Madness Party.

Best quote ever heard in reference to the NCAA Tournament belongs to-University of Kentucky-Coach John Calipari,

“…we’ll do what we do best and live with the consequences!”

It should be every Coach’s approach to the tournament. There’s just no way to prepare for this type of Sudden Death Scenario.

Mike Krzyzeski is the man and he knows all about March Madness. Coach K has been running Duke Basketball flawlessly for more than thirty years and has been personally selected to defend the honor of United States Basketball versus the World in more than one occasion during the Olympics. Coach has never had one of these Meltdowns that Coaches always have and-win or loose- he always conducts interviews with the same gentleman’s dignity.

Personally, I feel that his greatest accomplishment to date is the fact that he has been able to remain friends with that sociopath, Bob Knight for all these years.

Coach Mike Krzyzeski’s Duke Blue Devils have stumble a bit heading into March Madness, but they’re loaded with talent. Coach will never admit to it publicly, but he has to be feeling a great sense of relief that his Blue Devils will be heading into the Dance without a monstrous bulls’ eye on their foreheads. He knows there’s an overlooked team out there just waiting in the weeds to ambush a Giant.

It’s the very definition of March Madness!

The only predictable thing about March Madness is…that it’s going to be unpredictable. That’s why everyone loves it! Even folks that know nothing about College Basketball will be filling in office pools.

The Networks are going to be stepping on each other with the multiple story-lines and trying to identify the Cinderella Teams early. It’s great fun for all, except for the Giants. You’re going to hear and read, all kinds of taglines like…Teams on the Bubble, Selection Sunday, Bracketology…and it’s just getting started.

Later on you will hear the words like Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight and Final Four…don’t be concern with the terminology…nobody knows how March Madness is going to unfold…that’s why everybody fills multiple office pools.

There is nothing more fun for yours truly than watching major Media Outlets scrambling to find video footage of some school in the middle of America’s Heartland. The days of hearing a television announcer butcher some kid’s last name because he was just handed the team’s roster list during warm-ups might be over, but there will be plenty of scrambling to go around.

March Madness is where Coaches earn their just reward for those sixteen hour work days and all the time spent away from their families. Returning players will feel-first hand-the payoff of all those hundreds of practice hours and suicide drills. And for first time players- and their parents-this will be a bucket list moment.

More on Bob Knight, The Bully…

Knight was an abusive bully to all his players, staff and faculty during his tenure at Indiana University. The only reason the Administration, the Alumni and the Boosters put up with his antics was because his teams were winning at the time.

NBA Greats, do not care for him much either,

Larry Bird had committed to play for the Hoosiers after graduating from High School, but decommitted shortly after a personal one-on-one visit with Bob Knight.

Knight also cut a young-free spirited-forward named Charles Barkley from the 1984 Olympic Men’s Basketball Team because, quote, “…he was not good enough..”

He was also the same guy that threw a chair at a referee, assaulted a Police officer in Puerto Rico and was video taped hitting a kid on the face during a game.