Sadness during madness

March Madness is great. College basketball grabs the attention of the nation, sucks us in, and ultimately crushes us. We drink. We sit on the couch transfixed on the TV when we should be writing the 11-page paper that is due tomorrow. We eat too many chips. We don’t call our girlfriends. The only people we talk to on the phone are friends at other colleges once their team loses – to rub it in. We see too many beer commercials. We Drink. And we watch as our brackets are busted and our favorite players play their last games before leaving for the NBA or to never be heard from again. The Top 5 “Sadness During Madness this year are: 


5. Blake Griffin’s last games?
Griffin likely will be teaming with Kevin Durant in Oklahoma next year. Though he is young enough, Durant is not going back to college. Griffin is NBA-bound. He will be a very good NBA player, but will not have dominating entertaining LeBron-like performances like he has in college. 


4. SU’s draw in the brackets
It’s great that we got a three seed. It’s not great that we’re in the same bracket as Oklahoma and North Carolina. Aren’t we much closer geographically to UConn and Memphis? Why couldn’t we be in a bracket with those two as the top two seeds? We can beat those teams. Maybe I’m going out on a little limb, but I picked Oklahoma to win the whole tournament, meaning SU loses in the Sweet Sixteen. 

3. Johnny Flynn’s last games?
We won’t know whether Flynn will leave school early for the NBA until well after the tournament is over. But it is likely that he will.

My plea: Johnny, if you come back and Paul Harris and Devendorf do too we can contend for a National Championship next year. If everyone comes back we will only lose Waffles from the rotation. We will add some good recruits and we easily be a top 10 team in the country and maybe even number one. 

2. Early hope
After the first night of play my bracket looked great. I had 15 of the first 16 games picked correctly. I got Western Kentucky and Maryland. The only one I got wrong was picking VCU to upset UCLA. 

1. Reality
Some lucky bastard wins your bracket pool. But even this guy is probably the square who picked a number one seed to win the tournament and doesn’t even have a great percentage right in the first round. By the time I went out to drink and party away mad bad bracket, my upset teams of West Virginia – who I had all the way in the Elite Eight – and Utah State – who I had going to the Sweet Sixteen – had lost as well as Tennessee and Utah – who I also had in the Sweet Sixteen. It got worse from there, but I don’t want to talk about it. 

-Andrew Sagarin