March Madness (Day 24)

As most of you know, I'm sure, I grew up in a basketball family. And by that I mean that I was basically forced to play basketball as a child, as was my sister. We also watched a lot of basketball, especially the Detroit Pistons, as they won back-to-back championships when we were young. We loved to watch the celebration video, Pure Pistons, and sing along with the raps ("Jump ball, tip to Isiah..."). We loved The Worm and The Microwave. We especially loved Joe Dumars. One day while we were at the ticket counter at the Detroit airport, the agent leaned toward us and asked, "Do you like basketball?" "Boy, do they ever," my aunt responded. "Well that's Joe Dumars," the agent said, indicating toward a ticket counter further down. I remember barely being able to see him, but being excited nevertheless. A brush with greatness.

Although I was raised to root for Ohio State and hate Michigan, I do not remember being very into college basketball until we lived in Tucson. We attended a high school with a rather stellar boy's basketball team, and the coach had connections in the college world. One year the first rounds of the NCAA tournament were in town, and the Stanford team came to practice in our gym. My team of course went to the gym to get a glimpse of them. My parents were also nice enough to buy my sister and me tickets to the tournament. It was quite exciting!

My sophomore year of high school, the Wildcats won the national championship. Not only were they the local team, but one of the boys from our high school was a walk-on there. We had all been smitten with him since our freshman year when our coach had the varsity boys bring us roses before our first game. He rarely played at UA but sat at the end of the bench looking cute next to Josh Pastner, now the head coach of Memphis. The 1997 tournament run was amazing and nail-biting, and I remember watching games with my friends, all basketball players, and screaming at the TV. It truly was March Madness.

For the last many years, I have stopped paying much attention to sports, partly because I am away from my sister's influence and we don't have a TV. In addition, Matt likes hockey and baseball while I prefer football and basketball. But it is still fun to fill out a bracket. Two years ago I used Barack Obama's, but it did not do me very much good after the first couple rounds. This year I spent about 37 seconds filling out my bracket while the first game was playing, and I am now losing miserably to Matt, having lost 11 of the first 28 games including one of my final four picks. But we paid $3.99 to watch all the games online, and we have been enjoying some nail-biters this evening. Two crazy upsets! I guess that's why it's March Madness!