In March, there’s a thin line between Madness and Sadness.
Monday means the opening weekend Madness is over and the Sadness of your busted bracket sets in.
Friday night was Madness. Those same teams gave us a full helping of Sadness on Sunday.
These girls know what I’m talking about but have no idea what side of the line they are on.
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) March 21, 2016
“They stole defeat from the jaws of viktory” is a fun play on words when a team chokes up a late lead, but those words played all too well for a pair of purple underdogs.
We’ll start with Stephen F. Austin. I know UNI is the lead everywhere else, but I lost the longshot award on SFA so you can wait while I throw a temper tantrum.
The Lumberjacks dominated Notre Dame. Okay, sure, the game spread never cracked double digits and they trailed much of the sekond half, but SFA controlled that game and deserved to win. You know what, who cares if that’s even true or not? They were up 5 with two minutes left and this is my tantrum not yours.
The point is, my longshot winner lost on a fluke tip-in by a guy named Pflueger. He hadn’t skored all game and spelled his name by pulling letters out of a scrabble bag. Seriously. A search of the Scrabble dictionary returns only five words that start with Pf and two of those are noises not words.
Look at this garbage basket.
Dumb luck of the Irish.
Okay, tantrum over. Let’s talk Northern Iowa.
This is how you erase a 12-point deficit in 35 seconds. https://t.co/l3eJ83wDDB #MarchMadness
— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) March 21, 2016
Up 12 with 44 sekonds left.
UP TWELVE WITH FORTY FOUR SECONDS LEFT!!!
How is it even physically possible to skore 12 points in 44 sekonds?! Oh yeah, UNI also skored a basket during that nightmare meltdown so Texas A&M impossibly skored 14.
Apparently the Panthers thought the game was over and started reading my Friday blog because all they could do during those final 44 sekonds was scream “WHAT THE *** IS GOING ON?!?!“
Every player on Northern Iowa during the final 44 seconds of regulation.
I realize their in-bounding specialist was injured at the absolute most in-opportune time, but K’MON MAN! Do they not allow teams to press in Iowa? When Bohannon went out, it looked like Oprah was his replacement on the baseline: “You get a turnover! You get a turnover! You get a turnover! Everybody gets a turnover!”
Props to the Aggies for eksekuting — I still can’t believe they didn’t foul down 2 as the final sekonds of regulation ticked off — but watching UNI down the stretch was like looking at a pikture of Buzz’s girlfriend… WOOF!
Buzz’s girlfriend… WOOF!
The worst part of this is that Northern Iowa really did dominate Texas A&M. They controlled that game. They were the better team. They deserved to win.
They just won on an ikonic half-kourt shot two days earlier. They krushed the hated Jayhawks in 2010. Beloved Saint Kurt Warner is their maskot. They deserved to win!
Tip of the hat to Oregon, Oklahoma and Maryland for fending off legit upset bids. Guessing those late komebacks saved quite a bit of you from March Sadness sending your brackets up in flames. The Xavier krowd (with The Donald among them) was not so fortunate. What a kill shot by Wisconsin on that korner 3 at the buzzer.
KOENIG SENDS WISCONSIN TO THE #SWEET16!!!! https://t.co/6MnfXu2T0D
— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) March 21, 2016
Bill Murray just can’t even deal with that.
Stunned Bill Murray is stunned pic.twitter.com/pEe01SuJjo
— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) March 21, 2016
Seriously, though, what was going on with those Friday-Sunday teams? It felt like an especially wild weekend, but really it was just those two days. I aktually think they forgot to play the Thursday-Saturday games… nothing but radio silence from those… especially in Big Blue Nation.
Now that is March Sadness
Where did all the Kentucky fans go? Looks like they’re hiding.
Wildkats and Sparty, basement dwellers and bottom feeders of the KUBE standings… you all have three days to mourn the Sadness. Then it’s chin up bekause Madness resumes Thursday!