Early-round upsets killed my bracket

I had just finished broadcasting Pitt’s dramatic 59-55 victory over Wisconsin in the second… I had just finished broadcasting Pitt’s dramatic 59-55 victory over Wisconsin in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. As I packed up the radio equipment and gleefully strode past the court, watching a sea of heartbroken, scarlet-clad Midwesterners exiting the Bradley Center in droves, I noticed a small crowd congregating by the television set in the media workroom.

Curious, I walked over to find that the fuss was over another basketball game that was in its last minute. Mo Finley of the ninth-seeded Alabama-Birmingham Blazers had just hit a 17-foot jump shot with 12.2 seconds left to give his squad a 76-75 lead over the nation’s No. 1 overall team, Kentucky.

A major upset was on the horizon. As Kentucky inbounded the ball and took it across the half court, tensions were high. When Gerald Fitch launched a potential game-winning three-point shot with 2.2 seconds to go, the room was silent. When Fitch’s shot clanked off of the rim and Chuck Hayes’ subsequent put-back went errant, cheers of support for the underdog arose among most of the onlookers.

And throughout all of this, still high off of Pitt’s victory in a hostile environment, I could think of only one thing — my bracket was busted.

Completely.

Yes, I picked Kentucky to win the national championship in the majority of my office pools. And while I always love the underdog in games I have no emotional investment in, I couldn’t help but brood over the fact that a boatload of prospective work-free money had just gone down the drain after the tourney’s first weekend.

And every year at this time, millions of NCAA tourney followers like me worry themselves stupid over a series of number-crunching, upset-calculating, bracket-based office pools. The NCAA bracket and its gambling-light association has become such a large part of the American lexicon, that the word “bracketology” has firmly taken its place in the vernacular. It’s ridiculous to think of grown men in suits throwing bragging stock and cash into a basketball tournament played by college kids, then arguing about it for three weeks. Still, this has been the most frequent image I’ve encountered pretty much everywhere I’ve gone for the last two weeks.

Admit it. You think you have a “system” that will crack the randomness of the tournament that is nicknamed “March Madness.” Your bracket looks foolproof when you first turn it in. A five beating a 12. The eights and nines splitting across the board. Two ones, a strong two, and a four in the Final Four.

Then one of your Elite Eight teams gets dumped on the first day. A national championship participant is done by the first weekend. And by the time April rolls around and all is said and done, your girlfriend wins, after picking the bracket based on uniform color schemes.

It is an inexact science, this bracket-filling ridiculousness. UAB proved that once again on Sunday, and I’ve let myself get wrapped up in it again this year. But this will change from now on.

I’m not filling out brackets anymore. Part of the joy of watching the tournament is the buzzer-beaters, the upsets, and the individual performances that turn college stars into NCAA Tournament legends. I should have been really excited for UAB because, not only did it pull off a huge upset, but they also opened up an easier road for Pitt, should Pitt get to the Final Four. Instead, I was more worried about my bracket than I was about the action on the court, which is why I watch college basketball anyway.

Besides, good gambling logic states that it is no good to fill out a tournament bracket when a team that you root for is participating. And considering Pitt’s success over the last three years, and their recruiting over the last two, this is a program that should be playing deep into March for several years to come.

Michael Cunningham is a senior staff writer for The Pitt News. He really hopes that Pitt keeps winning.