If we were talking about geography, this week would be roughly comparable to foothills consisting of the various conference tournaments. Actually the new 68-team format will have play-ins for all four regions, so the NCAA First Round on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week will actually be a second range of foothills. Those games will determine 16-seed position in each of the four regional brackets. Come the Second Round on Thursday and Friday and the Third Round on Saturday and Sunday, we’ll actually start climbing some real mountains.
There are always plenty good games scattered throughout the tournament, but unless you personally have a bona fide dog in the hunt, the first weekend is what puts the sizzle in the skillet. It’s when the giant killers emerge. Cinderella teams get fitted for glass Converse shoes and start boarding their pumpkin carriages. Being a Baton Rouge boy, I can remember when LSU lived that fairy tale in 1986 to become the first of only two 11 seeds to ever reach the Final Four.
As a Louisiana transplant living in Kansas and bearing street creds by way of my Jayhawk wife, I technically do have a very viable canine to follow this year. They’re pedigreed, too. It was so much fun watching them win best in show in 2008. I’m way hoping that KU’s mythical birds get nowhere near any giant killers or princesses until April 4 is marked off the calendar.
Since its release in 1986, it has been my tradition to watch the movie, Hoosiers, at least once during the month of March. It is very unlikely that I am alone. With the exception of The Wizard of Oz or The Ten Commandments, I’m thinking this masterpiece starring Gene Hackman, Dennis Hopper, and Barbara Hershey and graced by a very believable bunch of high school kids from Indiana might be the most repeatedly viewed movie of all time. That’s just a guess on my part. It is a beautifully made motion picture and will not fail to get your Madness cranked. If you are a fan of the sport that Naismith birthed and of the movie that makes love to it, you’d probably enjoy taking a look at IMDB’s trivia page for the movie by riding the following link.
IMDB: Hoosiers Trivia Page
I’ve had some brushes with basketball notables over the course of my life, many of them the result of my attendance of basketball camps when I was a high school player. One of them was Jay McCreary, who was LSU’s basketball coach from 1957 to 1965. I can remember Coach McCreary instructing us on how to get low and mobile in our defensive stance. He’d drop down low enough to swing his arm and touch the court with his hand at which time he’d say, “Grab a root and growl!” Anyway, he’s the guy who gives me my (Kevin) Bacon Number for Hoosiers. In the movie, it was 1952 and the giant killer was Hickory beating the big school from South Bend. In real life, the game on which the movie was based was little Milan beating Muncie Central in 1954. Jay McCreary coached Muncie Central to the Indiana State High School Championship in 1952, but Hollywood was more interested in 1954 when his Bearcats were felled by the Indians of Milan. The following link will take you to an interesting recent article that appeared in the Muncie newspaper about that 1954 game.
Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame: Jay McCreary
Good luck with you tournament bracket. If you’re picking the Jayhawks, maybe I’ll see you in the winner’s circle.
