Sweet sweet NCAA bracket

Sweet can turn sour faster than a Blackberry Warhead.

But, as of this moment, I’m content my NCAA Tournament bracket. I’m pleased with my rational, yet sometimes serendipitous picks that came to fruition while others sit in their basements and dent up their mini-fridges with a steel toed boot.

Thirteen of sixteen predictions have made it through the first weekend of March Madness. Only Ohio (Michigan), Xavier (Duke) and Wisconsin (Vanderbilt) have been keen on snaffuing my binge to the top of the heap.

Over six million brackets were filled out on ESPN.com alone, not a one of them being exactly right.

This guy isn’t far off though. With my bakers dozen of sweet sixteen teams, I reside in the 99.8% percentile. A dazzling one of only 11-thousand people will this good of a bracket. (*big head motion*) I’m the Pirates Cove Golf Course Pro, more lucky than good but I do know how to play the bank rock “better than most”.

My Final Four contains Indiana, Marquette, Syracuse, and Kansas. But we’re a long way from there.

March Madness; Pick crazy

You're probably more likely to get struck by lightning then being able to pick the entire opening round of the NCAA Tournament. The odds, which this time of year are shaky at best, are thunderously, and factually 587,000 to 1, not in your favor.

So when filling out your bracket you shouldn't think like a college basketball expert; especially one that rattles off stats and RPIs like it's their job. Get in a bracket challenge with your mom and you'll soon find out that it is nothing more than a crap shoot. 

Roll the dice because there is no way your going to make a ripple if you don't get a little crazy. It is called "March Madness" for a insanely good reason.

No pick is safe. Doubt the most obvious. Stare in the mirror, shave half your face and then reconsider that #5 versus #12 matchup again. 

Everyone thinks Kentucky or Syracuse is going to win it. They are number one seeds, they are supposed to win it and prove all the "experts" right. But that would just mean there are a million experts in this country. Don't go with the flow, because that flow is stale.

Turn off the television. Sit in the dark. Eat nothing but Cheetos for whole week. Then pick the tournament.

You'll either look like a genius or you'll be a thorn in your English teacher's side with the amount of "coulda", "woulda", "shoulda"s you say. Either way you'll have to sit in the corner of the classroom with the dunce cap on. You're singled out for being the person that made that pick, with no regrets, and either they hate you for being right or laugh at you for being wrong.

Race hamsters. Change your name. Draw on an Anthony Davis unibrow with a crayon. But remember there are 5,608,500 brackets on ESPN (2011 numbers) lightning should strike at least once, right?


(Ha! That was a trick... Doubt everything!)

Murray State loses, but it's a long race

Don’t these Racers know it’s actually a marathon?

What’s worse than getting picked in March to win it all is, as a mid-major, getting picked to go to the Final Four, like Cinderella RSVPing to the Castle, in early February. There are a lot of ways to lose, but the worst way is when everyone picked you because you were the rabbit in the race.

Murray State now sits an awful, atrocious, even ghastly 23-1 on the season. They’re last of the unbeaten to fall, and the symbolic cork-bottle popper for the 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers team. The Racers looked beaten down, both on the scoreboard and across the faces of numerous players, as they lost to Tennessee State 72-68. (The TSU Tigers are a respectable 16-10 by the way.)

But this is what they should want at this point of the season.

The Racers will drop to about #20 in the rankings, but their popular stock will fall even further down the list, possibly into glorious obscurity. Staying under the radar, even while possibly cruising to their Ohio Valley Conference title and easily getting into the NCAA Tournament. You just don’t want to be the team the middle school teachers and mechanics pick as their sleeper.

Murray State can’t play the same type of game as the big name schools; they’ll have to take a different route. It’s journey that will lead them away from the hype and hoopla that could be their downfall. Losing ground now isn’t the end; it’s a reposition of sorts that could fundamentally assist in their travels amid madness in March.

The Racers can make a run but they don’t want to be looking back and realizing that sneaking up from the back of the field, from the rear of the pack so to speak, might have been the best strategy the whole time.

“I don’t want to be that guy mumbling into his drink at the bar,” as famously spoken by, none other than, Billy Murray.

THIS ISN'T SO HARD

ESPN’s March Madness guru Joe Lunardi teaches a class at St. Johns University called (and I couldn’t make this up) Bracketology 101. All the protégés learn the ways of ‘The Bracket’ in hope of one day beating their receptionists in the $4 buy-in office pool. (While they will base their selections on FG% and PPG, their receptionists make them with colors, mascots and point guard handsomeness in mind; yet it’s usually a pretty even matchup.)

But this year, even without the receptionist to brag to, I sit atop the mountain of sports geek’s brackets in the 99.9^th percentile on ESPN.com.

Have I figured out the secret code to college basketball? Am I the next Schwab? Can Dr. Pure continue to pull these names out of a hat only to gain untold amounts of pride? Or will I fall from grace? Will my bracket dismantle much like my little cousins at a Chucky Cheese birthday party (especially Elizabeth)?

Oh, you’ll never know.