Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
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Monday, March 28, 2005

March madness

For those outside the region, let me just explain that here in the Ohio River Valley basketball has about the same following that football (aka soccer, not the American or Australian versions) has in other areas of the world...the status of near religion. As proof I give you the following: in the NCAA men's tournament, our region had Kentucky, Louisville, Eastern Kentucky, Cincinnati, and West Virginia all in the running. Kentucky games consistently have some of the largest and loudest crowds, no matter how far away they're playing. I've known of one wedding which took place on a tournament day and people tackily snuck portable radios into the church. And finally, one friend carefully wiped the dust off of his television 'preparing for worship' and he didn't mean the fact it was Easter.

I'm not a sports fan per se. I watch figure skating and Premier league football when I can, but I don't follow them regularly...I just like the action, the movement, and in figure skating's case, the artistic expression. But if I am around a game of basketball, I tend to get drawn in, so I watched the thrilling Louisville-West Virginia game Saturday with my grandmother. I didn't watch the Kentucky-U. Michigan game, because we were playing our own game (Cthulhu) in the next room, but I heard the reaction to the three-pointer end-of-game million-and-one shot, the controversy over whether to allow it or treat it as a two-pointer (ending the game rather than going into overtime), and then the ensuing overtime play.

After all that, the loss was bitter for the fans, and I'm sure for the team, and I've never seen so many people dragging around like I've seen today. I suspect they'll be talking about the game for a long time, and what could have been. And of course, the fact that Louisville, with the former Kentucky coach in charge, did make the next phase of the tournament (the Final Four), made it only worse.

Still, there's always next year, right?

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