Three Thoughts is a new feature GoldandBlack.com will run every Monday morning in-season.
ON THE NCAA TOURNAMENT
Three No. 1 seeds have held to this point at the NCAA Tournament.
Around them, though: Chaos.
The Big Ten was the best conference in America this season. Michigan's its last man standing. The Big 12 got seven teams in the NCAA Tournament. It's down to just Baylor.
Oregon State, a 12 seed, is in the Elite Eight. Had to beat mid-major Loyola to get there.
UCLA is a game away from the Final Four, too. From the First Four to the Final Four, perhaps. It had to beat Abilene Christian to reach the Sweet 16, where it beat Alabama in overtime.
Oral Roberts very nearly made it, also.
This is what we love about college basketball.
I think what I missed most this year was those moments during March huddled around NCAA media work room TVs with sportswriters I don't know, just watching the ends of games and rooting for the underdogs, quietly cheering for them when they do well or less-quietly cursing them when they don't.
This is what we love about college basketball.
But this is what I hate about college basketball, the outsized gravity this wonderful event has in its sport, when really all it is is the ultimate crapshoot set in the most emotional of environments. Some teams are better than others, of course, but when you put the most combustible resource on earth — the 18- to 22-year-old male — on the biggest stage, under the brightest lights and sprinkle in a little desperation and ambition, crazy things happen.
