Last Night’s Carnage
There’s more fire than this one, but this is the only one that deserves special mention. Just to recap:
- I picked Utah over Arizona. Despite their win, my opinion that Arizona should not have even been in the tournament remains unchanged. Results in the tournament can’t be allowed to validate a bad decision to allow a team to reach the tournament based on the past 10 years of success rather than the past year’s results.
- I picked West Virginia over Dayton. What a complete failure by West Virginia. Maybe they should stick to having overrated football players instead of pretending to be a competent basketball school.
- I had Temple beating Arizona State. What the hell was I thinking, other than, “The PAC-10 sucks ass.”
But Wake Forest. Oh, Wake Forest, you’ve broken my heart again.
Flash back to two or three years ago. Chris Paul’s Wake Forest team was rolling. They were athletic. They were fast. They shot the ball well from the outside and could generate pressure on the inside. They weren’t the overly popular pick to win the championship, but picking them wasn’t a horrific long shot. Then they decided to not show up a game, and got upset. Immediately following, I got a single line instant message from the guy in charge of our NCAA pool: “Well, you’re done.” He was right.
But I don’t hold grudges in the NCAA tournament. Wake Forest’s massive failure of the past was at the edges of my conciousness, but surely they could handle Cleveland State. I mean, really, what the hell is Cleveland State? How do you have a “State” college, but then name it after a city? Shouldn’t it be something like Northern The Ohio State? Shouldn’t they have The Northern The Ohio State Marching Band? Shouldn’t they chant “N-O-O-H-I-O” before every game?
Well, I’ll tell you what: Wake Forest, a school with a really strong basketball history, out of a power conference, didn’t know, either. And they decided to get rolled instead of competing on the court. I have a very catchy version of the Wake Forest fight song (developed for when Wake Forest visited Purdue one season) that I’ll be humming all day, instead.
I’m starting to wonder if this is the modus operandi of Wake Forest. Potential greatness mixed with crushing, crushing failure. Nah, that can’t be it. Next you’ll be telling me Gonzaga is overrated.