Hello All,
Is it a coincidence that Dan Stein was born in March? I think not. My birthday always holds the promise of the last week of regular season college basketball, which means my birthday is the unofficial start date (in my mind) of post-season college basketball.
This past weekend was the best sports weekend of the entire year: the opening 4 days of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
And, of course, I wrote down my thoughts for the weekend. And away we go!
1st Day
- I was unable to catch the first round of games, as I was at work (I wanted to request off but was unable to get away with taking three days off in one week after I missed Monday to drive back from visiting my brother in the Redneck Riviera - a different story for a different time). However, at about 2 p.m. I checked my phone and had a series of panicked text messages from my brother and my Ultra-Jewish buddy Josh. Josh, Billy and I had all picked Villanova to make the Final Four. Villanova was headin’ to overtime against some college called Robert Morris. MADNESS!
- **SIDENOTE: You know how every school has its own abbreviation on the bracket that is universally accepted, like “Cincy” for Cincinnati and “G’Town” for Georgetown? Why can’t Robert Morris be “Bobby Mo”? Just puttin’ that out there.**
- I proceeded back to work for the final two hours of my shift, which of course happened to be an outrageously busy day, preventing me from checking my phone to keep tabs on the game. I got done with work and literally sprinted to my car to find out that ‘Nova had hung on in overtime, which apparently was only made possible by some of the worst officiating in history. I almost had a heart attack during that second that it takes your cell phone to reload gametracker on ESPN’s mobile site. The best comment I read was in Bill Simmons’ live chat, when a poster said “Villanova must be Tim Donaghy’s alma mater”. Anytime you are three games in to the tourney and the results are the Gators losing to the Fightin’ Mormons in double overtime (lead by some guy named Jimmer), Notre Dame losing by one and a near heart attack while a mobile page loads, you know you’re in for a good day (if I haven’t mentioned it lately, I still hate UF and Notre Dame).
- I got home to see Murray State locked in a battle with Vanderbilt. I had Murray State beating the Commodores (great nickname) and then advancing to the Sweet 16. When the Racers pulled off the upset by taking out the Commodores on a buzzer beater, I was so excited that I jumped up from the bar stool I was sitting at and slammed my hand on the underside of the kitchen counter. I opened up an inch long gouge on my knuckle that proceeded to bleed like Aldous Snow’s coral wound. Reason number 1786532456 why I love March Madness: incurring bodily harm because you are so excited that a team you could not care less about just won their opening round game. This is why people become addicted to gambling.
- The 3rd wave of games was its own trip through the Sports Gods’ Funhouse. Within an hour, I lost two Elite Eight teams (Marquette and Georgetown…thanks Big East). It took until precisely 10 pm EST on the first night of the tournament for me to pronounce my bracket dead. Well, that was fun while it lasted everybody.
- My favorite part? The look on John Thompson III’s face when his team laid egg after egg against Ohio University (the same team that was seeded 9th in the MAC Tournament a week earlier). It was the same look as the one that my buddy Doug must have had on his face the previous weekend. Doug lives in D.C. and called all the Wisconsin Representatives to try and get an internship. He happened to know one of the internship coordinators who replied to him, and he was set to start work last Monday (the same week the tournament started). The Friday before he was supposed to start, he went out to celebrate. He says he has spotty memories of the night, but the last thing he vividly remembers is running into said intern coordinator at a bar and sitting down with her and her friends. The next thing he remembers is waking up in the morning next to said internship coordinator. The look that John Thompson III had on his face for the entire second half is what I assumed Doug’s face was when he woke up. Complete, utter, disgusted shock. And from now on, I will refer to that look as the “Doug Face”.
2nd Day
- This was a disappointing day, where the chalk mostly held, minus one upset (Cornell over Temple) that everyone predicted and a couple (including Georgia Tech over Oklahoma State) that were technically upsets but nobody got excited about. It reminded me of a running theme from my weekend-sheer disappointment (and not just with the ladies this time!). One of my brother’s friends is named Jake Taylor, which I assume is after the greatest catcher in the history of baseball movies (Jake Taylor gets the edge over Crash Davis, mostly because Davis never made the show and Taylor was a perennial All Star in his prime; everyone forgets this because Davis got crazy bath tub sex with Susan Sarandon while Taylor only got make up sex with Rene Russo). Assuming that the Jake Taylor I was meeting would realize the gift his parents had given him, the first thing I said was “Hey Taylor, how’s your wife and my kids?” He just stared at me. Undeterred, every time my brother and I saw him for the rest of the weekend, which was a lot, one of us would say something like “Taylor, they ain’t cut you yet?” or “Taylor, how the knees holdin’ up?” You would figure, having had this awesome name for 18 years and two drunk morons harassing him, he would have every line from that movie memorized and be ready with a Jake Taylor classic response, no? Wrong. He usually just smiled, and once actually said “Hey man, my knees are great, thanks for asking!” Total disappointment, just like the second day of this tournament, which followed up one of the greatest opening days of all time. Kind of like Major League II following up Major League.
- Highlights of the day included Tom Izzo’s own Doug Face after Michigan State got called for a lane violation late in their close win over New Mexico State, Tom Penders’ Perm, and a little trip I made with the remote control over to “Cathouse: The Series” on HBO. I had never seen this before and decided this was too priceless to not give its due five minutes. Evidently, it is a show about a whorehouse and the people who work in it. I was instantly rewarded when, within those five minutes, there was a segment on a pair of twins that have sex for money with some dude who asks them to touch each other. During their aside with the camera, they say something like “we would never touch each other…that would just be weird.” REALLY?!?!? Twins having sex with the same dude at the same time for money while it is taped and aired on HBO isn’t weird but that is? I’m not saying they are wrong. That would be VERY weird. But I think at the point they have reached in their lives, those lines have to have blurred, no? Anyway, add “Cathouse: The Series” to the list of shows Dan Stein will never be watching again. Right next to “Cold Case”.
3rd Day
- The 3rd day of the tournament starts off with St. Mary’s, a team filled with crazy Australians
who I definitely want on my side in a bar fight, knocking off Villanova. My bracket goes from toast to torched, as my first Final Four team falls. But you know what? I’m not even mad. That’s impressive. Anytime a team is filled with Australians and boasts a tub of lard star center named Omar (who averages 30.5 ppg for the tourney, no less) I am officially on their bandwagon.
- The next wave features Kansas taking on Northern Iowa. As the game got set to tip, I turned to my dad and said “UNI will give them all they can handle.” Papa Stein laughed in my face. Sometimes, I am ahead of my own time.
- Northern Iowa, behind Dan Stein’s new favorite player for the tournament, Lucas O’Rear (who is rocking the red, fuzzy mutton chops and looks like the uncle you never want to follow in the bathroom if he’s been in there for more than a couple of minutes) and Ali Farokhmanesh, take out Kansas. I had Kansas winning the whole thing. I knew my bracket was screwed, but damn. The best part was that I was eating with my folks at a Too Jay’s in the middle of Gainesville, Florida, and the entire place erupted in applause when Farokhmanesh (who looks like a guy you would play pickup with at the YMCA) hit the dagger three pointer. Reason number 98237621387879 why I love March Madness.
- This game reminds me of the scene in Part 1 of “The Pacific”, where the Japanese soldier gets shot roughly 317 times but keeps screaming and walking, showing an indomitable determination to stay alive before the Marine pulls out his pistol and puts him out of his misery. Usually, my bracket absorbs a huge number of body blows early in the tournament but I keep hope alive until the very end. No one ever has the courtesy to just mercy kill my bracket and let me enjoy the rest of the games for what they are: potential upsets. Well, Northern Iowa did me the favor of shooting my bracket in the chest with a pistol while it staggered around, clinging to life. Thank you Lucas O’Rear, thank you.
- Favorite sight of the evening wave: Wake Forest’s Al- Farouq Aminu sitting on the bench late in Kentucky’s blowout win with a look of disinterest on his face that looked like he was trying to determine the earliest possible minute he could declare for the NBA draft. Gotta love the early entry rules.
4th Day
- “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “She’s Out of My League” are starting to look like movies I might spend $10 bucks on. That is how you know I have been watching too much basketball. Also, the next time I see the disgusting AXE commercial with the fire hydrant arm pits, I might blow up the AXE factory. I will then promptly be lynched by every Frat Bro in the country.
- This is March Madness at its best and worst: My dad, a lifelong Maryland fan, was roped in to believing that Maryland had completed its miracle comeback when Greivis Vazquez hit the go-ahead layup with 6 seconds left. Michigan State then came back down and drained the game winner as the buzzer sounded. My father, a 50 year old man who has seen pretty much everything there is to see in sports, was sitting on the edge of a coffee table muttering “don’t leave him open, don’t leave him open, don’t leave him open”. When State hit the dagger, he fell from the table to a ball on the floor and laid there in silence for 5 minutes. And he’s 50. His words when he got up: “I would have rather lost by 17 than watch that.” I cannot even put in to words the agony of defeat. Reason number 1009032467826346723486 why I love March Madness.
- Hey Wisconsin: Go F*ck yourselves! Last year, Wisconsin cost me a bet which resulted in me having to do 40 on-command pushups. In a bar. With a live band. On the stage. While the band counted them off. While I wore a suit. Karma is a bitch!
- There was not much to write about for the rest of the day, mostly because I got sucked in to watching the replay of the 2002 Rose Bowl stomping that was Miami over Nebraska. A truly epic night cap to the best sports weekend of the year. Go ‘Canes!
Is it a coincidence that Dan Stein was born in March? I think not. My birthday always holds the promise of the last week of regular season college basketball, which means my birthday is the unofficial start date (in my mind) of post-season college basketball.
This past weekend was the best sports weekend of the entire year: the opening 4 days of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
And, of course, I wrote down my thoughts for the weekend. And away we go!
1st Day
- I was unable to catch the first round of games, as I was at work (I wanted to request off but was unable to get away with taking three days off in one week after I missed Monday to drive back from visiting my brother in the Redneck Riviera - a different story for a different time). However, at about 2 p.m. I checked my phone and had a series of panicked text messages from my brother and my Ultra-Jewish buddy Josh. Josh, Billy and I had all picked Villanova to make the Final Four. Villanova was headin’ to overtime against some college called Robert Morris. MADNESS!
- **SIDENOTE: You know how every school has its own abbreviation on the bracket that is universally accepted, like “Cincy” for Cincinnati and “G’Town” for Georgetown? Why can’t Robert Morris be “Bobby Mo”? Just puttin’ that out there.**
- I proceeded back to work for the final two hours of my shift, which of course happened to be an outrageously busy day, preventing me from checking my phone to keep tabs on the game. I got done with work and literally sprinted to my car to find out that ‘Nova had hung on in overtime, which apparently was only made possible by some of the worst officiating in history. I almost had a heart attack during that second that it takes your cell phone to reload gametracker on ESPN’s mobile site. The best comment I read was in Bill Simmons’ live chat, when a poster said “Villanova must be Tim Donaghy’s alma mater”. Anytime you are three games in to the tourney and the results are the Gators losing to the Fightin’ Mormons in double overtime (lead by some guy named Jimmer), Notre Dame losing by one and a near heart attack while a mobile page loads, you know you’re in for a good day (if I haven’t mentioned it lately, I still hate UF and Notre Dame).
- I got home to see Murray State locked in a battle with Vanderbilt. I had Murray State beating the Commodores (great nickname) and then advancing to the Sweet 16. When the Racers pulled off the upset by taking out the Commodores on a buzzer beater, I was so excited that I jumped up from the bar stool I was sitting at and slammed my hand on the underside of the kitchen counter. I opened up an inch long gouge on my knuckle that proceeded to bleed like Aldous Snow’s coral wound. Reason number 1786532456 why I love March Madness: incurring bodily harm because you are so excited that a team you could not care less about just won their opening round game. This is why people become addicted to gambling.
- The 3rd wave of games was its own trip through the Sports Gods’ Funhouse. Within an hour, I lost two Elite Eight teams (Marquette and Georgetown…thanks Big East). It took until precisely 10 pm EST on the first night of the tournament for me to pronounce my bracket dead. Well, that was fun while it lasted everybody.
- My favorite part? The look on John Thompson III’s face when his team laid egg after egg against Ohio University (the same team that was seeded 9th in the MAC Tournament a week earlier). It was the same look as the one that my buddy Doug must have had on his face the previous weekend. Doug lives in D.C. and called all the Wisconsin Representatives to try and get an internship. He happened to know one of the internship coordinators who replied to him, and he was set to start work last Monday (the same week the tournament started). The Friday before he was supposed to start, he went out to celebrate. He says he has spotty memories of the night, but the last thing he vividly remembers is running into said intern coordinator at a bar and sitting down with her and her friends. The next thing he remembers is waking up in the morning next to said internship coordinator. The look that John Thompson III had on his face for the entire second half is what I assumed Doug’s face was when he woke up. Complete, utter, disgusted shock. And from now on, I will refer to that look as the “Doug Face”.
2nd Day
- This was a disappointing day, where the chalk mostly held, minus one upset (Cornell over Temple) that everyone predicted and a couple (including Georgia Tech over Oklahoma State) that were technically upsets but nobody got excited about. It reminded me of a running theme from my weekend-sheer disappointment (and not just with the ladies this time!). One of my brother’s friends is named Jake Taylor, which I assume is after the greatest catcher in the history of baseball movies (Jake Taylor gets the edge over Crash Davis, mostly because Davis never made the show and Taylor was a perennial All Star in his prime; everyone forgets this because Davis got crazy bath tub sex with Susan Sarandon while Taylor only got make up sex with Rene Russo). Assuming that the Jake Taylor I was meeting would realize the gift his parents had given him, the first thing I said was “Hey Taylor, how’s your wife and my kids?” He just stared at me. Undeterred, every time my brother and I saw him for the rest of the weekend, which was a lot, one of us would say something like “Taylor, they ain’t cut you yet?” or “Taylor, how the knees holdin’ up?” You would figure, having had this awesome name for 18 years and two drunk morons harassing him, he would have every line from that movie memorized and be ready with a Jake Taylor classic response, no? Wrong. He usually just smiled, and once actually said “Hey man, my knees are great, thanks for asking!” Total disappointment, just like the second day of this tournament, which followed up one of the greatest opening days of all time. Kind of like Major League II following up Major League.
- Highlights of the day included Tom Izzo’s own Doug Face after Michigan State got called for a lane violation late in their close win over New Mexico State, Tom Penders’ Perm, and a little trip I made with the remote control over to “Cathouse: The Series” on HBO. I had never seen this before and decided this was too priceless to not give its due five minutes. Evidently, it is a show about a whorehouse and the people who work in it. I was instantly rewarded when, within those five minutes, there was a segment on a pair of twins that have sex for money with some dude who asks them to touch each other. During their aside with the camera, they say something like “we would never touch each other…that would just be weird.” REALLY?!?!? Twins having sex with the same dude at the same time for money while it is taped and aired on HBO isn’t weird but that is? I’m not saying they are wrong. That would be VERY weird. But I think at the point they have reached in their lives, those lines have to have blurred, no? Anyway, add “Cathouse: The Series” to the list of shows Dan Stein will never be watching again. Right next to “Cold Case”.
3rd Day
- The 3rd day of the tournament starts off with St. Mary’s, a team filled with crazy Australians
who I definitely want on my side in a bar fight, knocking off Villanova. My bracket goes from toast to torched, as my first Final Four team falls. But you know what? I’m not even mad. That’s impressive. Anytime a team is filled with Australians and boasts a tub of lard star center named Omar (who averages 30.5 ppg for the tourney, no less) I am officially on their bandwagon.- The next wave features Kansas taking on Northern Iowa. As the game got set to tip, I turned to my dad and said “UNI will give them all they can handle.” Papa Stein laughed in my face. Sometimes, I am ahead of my own time.
- Northern Iowa, behind Dan Stein’s new favorite player for the tournament, Lucas O’Rear (who is rocking the red, fuzzy mutton chops and looks like the uncle you never want to follow in the bathroom if he’s been in there for more than a couple of minutes) and Ali Farokhmanesh, take out Kansas. I had Kansas winning the whole thing. I knew my bracket was screwed, but damn. The best part was that I was eating with my folks at a Too Jay’s in the middle of Gainesville, Florida, and the entire place erupted in applause when Farokhmanesh (who looks like a guy you would play pickup with at the YMCA) hit the dagger three pointer. Reason number 98237621387879 why I love March Madness.
- This game reminds me of the scene in Part 1 of “The Pacific”, where the Japanese soldier gets shot roughly 317 times but keeps screaming and walking, showing an indomitable determination to stay alive before the Marine pulls out his pistol and puts him out of his misery. Usually, my bracket absorbs a huge number of body blows early in the tournament but I keep hope alive until the very end. No one ever has the courtesy to just mercy kill my bracket and let me enjoy the rest of the games for what they are: potential upsets. Well, Northern Iowa did me the favor of shooting my bracket in the chest with a pistol while it staggered around, clinging to life. Thank you Lucas O’Rear, thank you.
- Favorite sight of the evening wave: Wake Forest’s Al- Farouq Aminu sitting on the bench late in Kentucky’s blowout win with a look of disinterest on his face that looked like he was trying to determine the earliest possible minute he could declare for the NBA draft. Gotta love the early entry rules.
4th Day
- “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “She’s Out of My League” are starting to look like movies I might spend $10 bucks on. That is how you know I have been watching too much basketball. Also, the next time I see the disgusting AXE commercial with the fire hydrant arm pits, I might blow up the AXE factory. I will then promptly be lynched by every Frat Bro in the country.
- This is March Madness at its best and worst: My dad, a lifelong Maryland fan, was roped in to believing that Maryland had completed its miracle comeback when Greivis Vazquez hit the go-ahead layup with 6 seconds left. Michigan State then came back down and drained the game winner as the buzzer sounded. My father, a 50 year old man who has seen pretty much everything there is to see in sports, was sitting on the edge of a coffee table muttering “don’t leave him open, don’t leave him open, don’t leave him open”. When State hit the dagger, he fell from the table to a ball on the floor and laid there in silence for 5 minutes. And he’s 50. His words when he got up: “I would have rather lost by 17 than watch that.” I cannot even put in to words the agony of defeat. Reason number 1009032467826346723486 why I love March Madness.
- Hey Wisconsin: Go F*ck yourselves! Last year, Wisconsin cost me a bet which resulted in me having to do 40 on-command pushups. In a bar. With a live band. On the stage. While the band counted them off. While I wore a suit. Karma is a bitch!
- There was not much to write about for the rest of the day, mostly because I got sucked in to watching the replay of the 2002 Rose Bowl stomping that was Miami over Nebraska. A truly epic night cap to the best sports weekend of the year. Go ‘Canes!
