T.S. Eliot famously called April the cruelest month.
I guess Eliot didn’t follow college basketball.
If he did, he would know that March is the cruelest month.
And the coolest month. Both statements can be true.
March Madness is all shiny and new right now, new puppy smell, dew on the grass, that sort of thing.
But, here’s the thing. Sixty-eight teams begin the NCAA Tournament, blue bloods looking to add to their trophy cases, non-blue bloods looking to be Cinderellas, schools like Houston or Purdue or Tennessee or Iowa State looking to win that first title.
But 67 of those teams will end their season with a loss and each one will sting and some will be worse than a sting. In fact teams have already started losing.
Virginia was so bad Tuesday night I think they lost twice.
If you’re reading this I assume you’re a fan of college hoops. But March Madness attracts casual fans, many of whom have the perfect bracket and some money riding on it, maybe an office pool, maybe FanDuel or some such.
Maybe both.
Full disclosure. The house always wins. Vegas wasn’t built on the backs of winners. Never gambled and it’s not on my too-do list.
Obviously, others disagree. Lots of others.
It’s not just the perfect bracket that attracts casual fans. It’s upsets. Cinderellas.
If there’s an upset alert on a Duke game, it’s probably not good news for Duke. The Blue Devils haven’t pulled off an NCAA Tournament upset since Grant Hill and second-seeded Duke beat Glenn Robinson and top-seeded Purdue in 1994 in the Elite Eight.
That was the fourth of a streak of second-seed-Duke wins over the top seed in the regional finals over a six-year-period; the first three were Temple (1988), Georgetown (1989) and Connecticut (1990).
Doesn’t mean that Duke hasn’t benefited from some upsets elsewhere in its bracket. For example Mike Krzyzewski’s first Final Four was in 1986, when top-seeded Duke beat 12th-seed DePaul in the Sweet Sixteen and seventh-seed Navy in the Elite Eight after Syracuse, Indiana and Oklahoma had already been bounced.
It’s hard to pull off an upset if you’re seeded number one, which frequently has been the case for Duke. But when Duke has been given the chance to pull off an upset or two, it has not happened.
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