The first day of the NCAA men’s tournament was a flaming hot mess of upsets, overtime games and brackets busted beyond redemption.
And oh, my word, was it glorious.
Instead of the awkward silence – literal and figurative – of the last two years, this was March Madness as we know and love it. It was raucous and chaotic and thoroughly entertaining, from the first tip until the Mountain and the West went to bed.
The time zones, that is, not the conference. The Mountain West had cashed it in way earlier, all four of its schools out before the last games even began.
“Tonight, right?” Saint Peter’s coach Shaheen Holloway said when asked what March Madness means after his Peacocks knocked out second-seeded Kentucky, a trendy pick for the Final Four, in overtime.
“Every team that made it to the NCAA Tournament thinks that they could advance. You just have to be good on this night,” Holloway said. “It’s not about your record. It’s not about what school you at. It’s whoever is good on that night, and tonight, it was our night.”
Really, though, it was all our nights.
Much of the country has lived the last two years as if holding our breaths, uncertain when – or if — it would be OK to relax and let down our guards. The COVID-19 pandemic has killed nearly 1 million people in the United States alone, and everyone’s life has been disrupted in some way.
Oh, a semblance of normalcy returned. Schools re-opened, people went back to their offices and sports were once again…
