I always tell my friends that March is my second favorite month of the year. Why is that, one reason March Madness, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. From the conference tournaments (still props for the Ivy League for not selling out and having one) to the national championship game (yes in April) I would spend countless hours watching it and soaking it all in. Also, it always seemed like there would be an institute day on that first Friday of the tournament meaning if you could make it through school till 3 o'clock not watching any games, you could stay up late and watch Thursday's late games and then you were good for the weekend. My first pool was 1993 with just my mom, dad and sister. I picked UNC over Michigan in the final. Guess what happened? That was the best I ever did. Guess how much $$$ I won? 1 dollar!!! Yes. But honestly is there anything better then filling out the brackets (Editors note, Steve has a theory on picking brackets and is working on a statics breakdown of it right now. This piece will be coming out after the countdown of top ten moments) from doing the dumb who has better colors, which mascot is would win in a fight, who has the shortest names to my stubbornness and putting Kansas in the final four every year since 2000; I love it all. I do have a dilemma this year, now that Kansas has finally won it do I keep putting them in the final four? Only time will tell.
So kind of like the draft this gets a lifetime’s achievement award for making my top moments. But since this is a top moments list, I had to pick one moment and I am going to go with 2007 just barely beating out 2008 and the all day drink fest at Yogi’s.
2007 Men's NCAA Basketball Tournament: March 2007; Various Cities and location USA.
This one stands out for one main reason. This was the first year I joined my dad in Game NCAA Collegiate Basketball Draft Game . This is basically like fantasy football. Everybody drafts a team of 25 players from the teams that made the NCAA tournament. Whoever players score the most points wins the game. Pretty simple right? Well some strategy goes into it, like should I pick player X who scores 20 a game, but won’t make it out of the first round or should I take player Y who will see about 5 min a game for the number 1 seed.
The Draft itself take place at my Dad’s Fraternity Brother’s house. He has DirectTV which is hooked up to 5, that’s right 5 TVs in his basement. We had all sorts of action going one will drinking beer eating Italian beef, pizza and all other types of great food. The first day of the tournament that is where I watched the games. Fantastic place.
Our team was pretty good. We had a couple of Tennessee and Memphis players who did extremely well for us. We were leading after the first round, and a bigger lead after the second round. The big problem was we were starting to lose a bunch of players. We still had the lead after the second weekend, but going into the final four; we had no players left. Can you say LET’s GO DEFENSE!! Going into the title game our lead was just six points. Obviously we didn’t win. But now that I did this once I am addicted. And will continue to do this for years to come.
A couple of other things that made this year memorable.
I was reading Sports Guys running diary in real time. Here I just couldn’t stop laughing
Also in this year, Indiana beat Gonzaga for a round one victory but did end up losing to eventual runner up UCLA in the second round.
So now you might be asking. What is the greatest month of the year you ask? Clearly December. My birthday starts off a month that includes Christmas, New Years Eve, has football, basketball, and hockey in full swing. Everybody still likes the snow. It's just easily the best month ever.
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