March Sadness

Here we are, the most exciting time of the college basketball season, right? WRONG! Usually that's right, but not this year and probably not next year. And we have Kelvin the a-hole Sampson to thank for it.

This is the time of year that is supposed to be filled with excitement. The time of year where the worst case for an IU basketball fan is something called "the bubble". The time of year where you hear the name "Indiana" announced and it feels like they just announced your name for winning the Nobel Prize. The time of year where no matter IU's seed, you still get to look at the bracket and fantasize about the possible route to the Final Four and a 6th national title. The time of year where I pick up the phone and call all of you guys because writing about it on a blog just isn't good enough. The time of year where you skip work if IU plays in an early game. The time of year where you look for tickets and tell the wife something like "I don't ask for much. In fact, I'm not askin' now. I'm tellin' you that I just bought a $300 game ticket and a $300 flight to Phoenix to go watch the Hoosiers." Wife asks where you are staying and you respond that you don't know and don't care. That's the time of year this is supposed to be.

But instead, we bowed out of the Big Ten Tourney on Thursday and quietly ended our season.

I received an email from Chris yesterday that simply started out by saying "I'm depressed." Chris then made note of the great times and the wild range of emotion that the NCAA Tourney can bring even when you lose.

The game Chris mentioned was 2 years ago when we lost to UCLA. Does it suck to lose? You bet it does. But at least you had the opportunity to play in the Big Dance. And you got to go through all the things I mentioned above. And you have the 5 days of excitement from Selection Sunday up until your opening round game.

In this UCLA game 2 years ago, it was actually the second round game on Saturday. It turned out to be a wild ride for me and Chris that day. Here's a little recap.

Chris bought a bunch of Irish beers in honor of St. Patrick's Day. I went to the Harrell house and it was just me, Chris, and Shana (it should be noted that Shana left the room just a few minutes into the game due excessive rowdiness by Chris. I was rowdy too, but a wife always blames the husband so I'm going to run with that.) Now keep in mind that we are now well into our 30s and have matured quite a......uh-oh, my backspace key is not working.....that maturity part should be deleted.....read on.

Of course, we cracked open a couple beers and went into full blown analysis of the upcoming game while we waited for it to start. The beers taste extra good when you have March Madness and St. Patrick's Day all rolled into one and they were going down in a hurry. Throughout the night, they continued to go down in a hurry even though it was for very different reasons.

Pre-game and early game, the beers were going down due to March Madness excitement. Most of the 1st half, it was due to depression of how horribly we were playing. Late 1st half and halftime, it was due to the fact that it had gotten so horrible that we just had to get drunk and laugh it off. Early second half, let’s drink away any memory of this game (With less than 14 minutes to go in the game, the score was 34-16. Yes, we had only scored 16 points in the first 26 minutes of an NCAA tourney game. You can see why we were trying to drink away any memory of this one.)

Mid-second half, we were drinking to the fact that we managed to make a couple good plays and hit a couple 3s. In fact, the Hoosiers went on an 11-0 run to make it interesting at 34-27. But then it was back to the bottle when the run faltered and the score was 46-33 with just 5 minutes to play.

But then, Roderick Wilmont and Lance Stemler caught fire from behind the arc and the Hoosiers made an incredible late game run to tie the score at 49-49. By this time, Chris and I are already drunk, so we are jumping around, going crazy, and drinking some more. Unfortunately, the Hoosiers could not pull off the miracle and would end up losing 54-49. Nothing to do now but keep the buzz going and drink away the sorrow.

By the end of the night, the empty beer bottles laying around the Harrell house literally looked like there were 10 or more people over there.

So, even though it was a loss for the Hoosiers and it was a painful one, the whole experience was awesome. All the way from Selection Sunday to the first round win to the wild up and down emotional ride of the loss to UCLA.

I live for the NCAA Tournament. I think it is the best sporting event in all of sport.

But there is just one prerequisite -- the Indiana Hoosiers must be one of the 64 teams in the tournament. Period.

Let's raise our glasses to the idea that the Hoosiers will soon again be a shoe-in for the tournament and we get to live the highs and lows that make the NCAA Tourney true March Madness.