I think it’s pretty clear, at least to Virginia fans, that March is the cruelest month. College basketball — college being the operative word here — is my favorite team sport, and March brings an overwhelming amount of meaningful games in rapid succession. The format is the best for drumming up drama and unpredictability and the worst for actually determining the best team in the country — UConn sends their regards.
The best part about the tournament is betting on brackets. I’ve won every monetary bracket pool I’ve ever participated in — the criterion being a buy-in for a winner-take-all prize. The fact that I have only technically been in one of these pools does not hurt my sense of accomplishment in the slightest. Even though I only started following basketball the day I got into the University in January 2012, and watched exclusively our games that year, I can say with confidence I was the most knowledgeable basketball fan in my high school two months later.
For example, when UAB beat Iowa State this year, everyone with a meaningful bracket saw the situation with perfect clarity — Iowa State only won the Big 12 tournament because Oklahoma missed a layup. When you live by the three, you die by the three. UAB, after canceling their football program, was able to focus completely on basketball and was red hot after winning whatever conference they came from. The morning before brackets locked, I thought I was taking Iowa State out of my final four because I needed to have a more unique bracket to win. Now, I realize it was my profound basketball intuition telling me ISU was vulnerable.
Everyone does, however, recognize the existence of luck behind the intelligence-based broad strokes of the bracket. For me, staring at computer rankings and stats is balanced by a strong ritual element. My pool-winning bracket was named “U.Va. All The Way.” I am not superstitious, but I am a believer in tradition, and I have named every subsequent bracket the same.
This year, perhaps, is the proudest I’ve ever been of a bracket. In high school, I won by picking the number one overall and creating a fairly straightforward bracket in which I settled close calls by picking the school with the toughest-looking font. This year, my bracket was designed to be able to win in a pool — not a monetary pool, so it doesn’t count — in which half the participants picked Virginia to win it all, including myself. Aside from some ultimately unimportant day-one upsets, I found myself poised to make a run up the leaderboard — until Sunday.
Just as my bracket pushes me to follow a bunch of schools I don’t really care about, when the bracket is shot, my interest in basketball drops to nothing. In past years, we had some good games down the stretch, like the Louisville-Michigan championship game, but this year, I see very little appeal. I want Kentucky and Duke to lose as soon as possible and I wouldn’t mind Notre Dame or Oklahoma winning it all, though this probably won’t happen.
After a great regular season, the postseason has been painful. I’m more than happy to wipe it off the books and focus on next year. Maybe this year’s tournament will end up being a gem, but I know I won’t be watching.
Christian’s column runs biweekly Fridays. He can be reached at c.hecht@cavalierdaily.com.
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