... in which there is MORE GLORIOUS MADNESS!! In which the improbable storybook finish REMAINS ALIVE!! Also THE ASTOUNDING DISAPPEARING NO. 1 SEEDS!!
Sorry for the carnival barker act. But doesn't this March of Madness continue to Thrill and Amaze?
The tournament resumed last night with half the Sweet Sixteen games, and in half of those two more No. 1 seeds went down, including the overall No. 1 Gonzaga. Arkansas, the lone SEC team left, took them out 74-68. so goodbye Drew Timme and Drew Timme's 'stache, and goodbye to the Splendid Splinter, Chet Holmgren.
And Arizona?
A lot of wise guys were picking the Wildcats to be national champs, but, nah. Five-seed Houston kicked them to the curb with surprising ease, 72-60, and now the Cougars are on to the Elite Eight, which will doubtless provoke a lot of Kelvin Sampson stories that will conveniently ignore the fact he once got kicked out of college coaching because of his unrepentant cheating.
I don't know if Sampson is still an unrepentant cheat, or if he's just gotten slicker about it with experience. Or perhaps the new frontier of NIL made a lot of formerly illegal shenanigans legal.
In any case, now the Coogs face Duke, which survived and advanced (again!) against Texas Tech. The Dukies have had to scrape and claw in two straight games now, and if that's a testament to how much they want to send Coach K out with one last national title, it may also suggest that sooner or later scraping and clawing won't be enough.
I'm guessing the network suits are praying to all the basketball gods that doesn't happen. A storybook finish after all this lovely chaos? Yes, please!
Meanwhile, America's darlings, those pesky St. Peter's Peacocks, play Purdue tonight. The consensus is, there's absolutely no way they'll be able to pull of three miracles in a row.
The Big Crazy just laughs.
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