“The Press Box” for March 2, 2022
It’s just about that time of year. March winds are blowing, but if we are lucky, we get a day here and there with a peek of what is promised from the weatherman come the month of May. Many folks don’t like the month of March. They complain it’s too cold, too grey and too long, but it does have a silver lining. March Madness.
March ushers in the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, aka March Madness. It is a unique event every spring where the country’s top men’s college basketball teams battle through seven rounds with the goal to be the last squad standing in the single-elimination knockout tournament. Its history began in 1939 and every team’s dream is to make it to the “Final Four” (the semifinal games) and then play for the National Championship.
It all starts with selection Sunday, which you can see this year on March 13th at 6:00 p.m. on CBS. The 32 Division I conferences all get an automatic bid that is handed to their conference champion. 68 teams will be put in a bracket and revealed ever so slowly to fans clamoring at home praying their team gets an at large bid. Typically, there are always a few live look-ins for the teams on the bubble and the first timers. Those are usually pretty fun to watch.
It has always seemed to me the elite of the super five conferences plays the closest to home throughout the tournament. I guess when you are that good the clout you carry is the guarantee of putting dollars in the pockets of the NCAA. After all, the men’s basketball tournament is the largest source of revenue for the NCAA every year. It is one of only five college championships out of the 90 championships the NCAA produces that makes more cash than it costs to host the event.
It isn’t looking good for the Mountaineers making it to the dance this year. That means we will most likely end up at the National Invitation Tournament (NIT). Although today most folks think of it as the consolation games, at one time the NIT was considered the better of the two tournaments. It also predates the NCAA by one year. According to TheBestSchool.org, “Between 1943 and 1945 the respective winners of the NIT and NCAA tournaments faced off against one another in order to secure a true national championship title.”
One of my favorite WVU basketball memories dates way back to the year 2005. That’s the year the name “Pittsnogle” became famous in every Mountaineer household. This is a great story.
After an up and down season and a hard fought Big East Championship, Coach John Beilein’s Mountaineers earned a seven seed in the West Region. The Blue and Gold was off to Cleveland for the first and second rounds. The Mountaineers faced the Creighton Bluejays and battled until the final minute but ultimately WVU won and advanced to the second round.
Next up was the Demon Deacons of Wake Forest, led by the future NBA All-Star, Chris Paul. Wake Forest was a second seed with a legit chance to win it all. WVU, on the other hand wasn’t given much of a shot. The Mountaineers were down double digits at the half but began to show signs of life in the second half. Mike Gansey started making shots. He started sinking three pointers one after another, and WVU goes on a run. And then Kevin Pittsnogle took over. The game goes to overtime, then double overtime. In the end the Mountaineers knocked off the Demon Deacons in a ginormous upset and went on to the elite eight. It was a show for the ages forever earning a spot in WVU men’s basketball history.
So why do we love March Madness so much? If the above story doesn’t get you fired up, then maybe it is the thought that very few of the student athletes playing in the tournament are known household names. For most of them they are just scrapy kids whose days of playing basketball are quickly coming to an end. It is the thought that these teams, even the unknown Cinderella teams, get a captivated audience cheering them on to the very end. When we witness others, especially the underdogs, reach greatness it motivates us in our own lives. It makes us dust off our true potential, remember our packed away dreams and pushes us to reach again, just one more time, for the brass ring.
So let the chaos begin! Get ready to fill out your bracket. And by the way, your odds of filling out a perfect bracket are basically nonexistent. You have a better chance of winning the lottery, getting struck by lightening, and rolling a perfect game in bowling all in the same day than nailing the perfect bracket. But hey, you still got to try!