The Ides of March and March "Madness"

The cold rains have returned to West Central Ohio...but hope is on the horizon.  It appears that some sun and warmer temperatures will be mixed in with the clouds and rain for the next 2 weeks.  I'm not sure how many, if any, scrimmage baseball games I will get in before the regular season is set to begin on March 28th...but the season will eventually kick off.

The Ides of March_____

March 15th is that day, along with St. Patrick's Day, that my birthday is sandwiched in between..."Beware the Ides of March" was the warning to Cesar...this March 15th brings the beginning of the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  It gets it start just a few miles south of me, in Dayton.  2 games on the agenda for tonight, and 2 more tomorrow, to pare the field down to 64.  Then Thursday and Friday the games kick off around the country.  My two favorite teams have #1 seeds...Duke and Ohio State, OSU with the top overall seed goes into the east and begins play in Cleveland, while the Blue Devils were sent to the West Regional, but first have to get by the weekend in their home state of North Carolina.  Go Duke!  If the Blue Devils get knocked off, Go Buckeyes....those 2 teams would meet in the national semi final, if they would happen to get that far....I would have to root for the Blue Devils then...but without a national title since 1960, I don't mind if the Buckeyes win it all...as long as they don't go through Duke to do it.

There have been some great tournament moments in the past years...of course most of the ones I have enjoyed have been the Duke runs to the title games...Coach K and Company, while hated by most of the country, have made it pretty enjoyable to be a Blue Devil fan.  I have no vested interest in Duke, a small liberal university from North Carolina...I just have always admired their top flight coach, and the mix of kids he surrounds himself and his program with.  For the most part, kids that are actually students first, and athletes second.  Players that actually attend classes and graduate with degrees that are worth something...few basketball or football programs around the country, at least in the major programs, can say that.

Some Great Moments in the NCAAs:

Duke beats Kentucky on the Laettner Miracle Shot...
 I would love to say I was sitting on my recliner or at the game when this happened...but alas, I, along with my brother-in-law, was on the way back from the Ohio High School Basketball Championship...and was listening to the game on radio...after Kentucky hit the shot to take the lead with 2.1 seconds left, I turned to him and said..."Well Hell, at least they won last year", thinking the game was all but over....(it wasn't):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY-iq58_oz4 

The "Dookies" went on to win it all again....

Butler tries to pull a "Laettner"....
 2010 saw another nail biter..this time upstart Butler out of Indianapolis and the Horizon League tried to steal the championship on their home court....(here are the final 2 minutes):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB00wfyuQjY 

I'm still trying to figure out why Duke wanted to intentionally miss that last free throw...but it made for great drama.  The Blue Devils hoisted the national title for the 4 time in 20 years...to go with a handful of other final four appearances.


So with the majority of games to be played in the next 5 days...I probably will be stuck by the TV(something I usually don't do these days) or watching live on the Internet....my brackets are filled out and I'm ready for them to "go bust".....

back later>>>>

Photos-The NCAA kicks off in Dayton, Ohio, just down the road tonight...4 "play in" games the next two nights, before the majority of teams kick off on Thursday and Friday.  Christian Laettner celebrates after hitting the shot that beat Kentucky in the Regionals in 1991, and Duke Senior Kyle Singler will try to lead this years edition to back to back championships.