Madness looms on horizon

By Brian Betz

Two Days. The time it takes me to force an analogy before I give up. Or, how much longer we have to wait for the most exciting month of the sports year.

March. It means No. 1 versus No. 16. It means 32 games in the first two days of play. It means Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery. It means Cinderella. It means Cincinnati choking before the Sweet 16. It means Duke's Christian Laettner in 1992 and Valparaiso's Bryce Drew in 1998. It means Final Four. But most of all, it means March Madness.

For the first time in years, the field for the NCAA Tournament is completely wide open. Usually it's easy to put Duke in the same sentence with "clear-cut favorite" - but not in 2003.

That might be why I'm anticipating this upcoming tournament more so than in the past (and that's tough for me to admit). The success of the mid-majors in recent years - Gonzaga, Creighton, Kent St., Butler, Southern Illinois and the recently mentioned Valpo Crusaders - have given "bracket-a-holics" like myself a reason to pencil in the 10, 11, 12 and occasional 13 seeds for a win or two every March. Except this year, that "mid" tag might give off a false sense of superiority.

Three of the four 12 seeds advanced to the second round last year and many more underdogs fought tooth and nail down to the wire to either win like UNC-Wilmington did over USC, or lose like UC-Santa Barbara did to Arizona. Either way, the tourney sets up for a total of 61 edge-of-your-seat contests in a stretch of 18 days. You do the math.

Whether it's North Carolina St. achieving the impossible by beating the University of Houston's Phi-Slamma-Jamma in 1983, Chris Webber's phantom timeout move in 1993 or Juan Dixon's feel-good story a year ago, the tourney always has a memorable story, or stories, to tell for years beyond. Ah, two days. Let the madness begin!