Devil In A Blue Dress

The madness has begun and I have to say I get pulled in a little more every year.  Before I moved to a place that considers itself the center of the college basketball universe, I had only a peripheral knowledge of what this time of year was about.  Now, when I hear a band playing Devil in a Blue Dress, I know Duke must be playing well.  Sweet Caroline does the same for Carolina -- hey Beth, is there a song for State?  A note for my Pac10 area friends:  Duke is a evil as USC, Carolina (UNC Chapel Hill) is like UCLA and NC State is like maybe, any Cal State school, but all of them are within about 30 miles of each other and there are rivalries that pre-date the mouse setting up shop in an orange grove.  Here, generations of people have deep-seeded, inherited hatred, at least a couple of days a year.  None of them are more pronounced than the days of the Duke-Carolina games or the ACC tournament.  My friend Beth even takes the Friday of the ACC tournament off every year to celebrate the games like her own personal Super Bowl.  It's infectious and it's fun and for me, it's a good warm up for what is yet to come when my Canes start the playoffs in April.

 

The brackets will be announced later today and I'll spend the next 3 days tearing my hair out, trying to figure out how far Gonzaga might go and how to pick the games where both teams are unknown to me.  I know that the prevailing opinion is that you shouldn't pick a school because you went there, or your parents went there, or your best friends second cousin went there, but when those choices include Maryland and UCLA, how can I cross them out?  The first round is a crap shoot -- once I've picked all my obvious choices (ACC and Pac 10 schools, NC schools, California schools, all the remaining #1s, #2s, #3s & #4s) I start with the weird tie-breakers -- directional schools, those that start with vowels, or which mascot would win in a brawl.  Wish me luck!