Sunday, March 28, 2010

Journal - March Madness

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know that I have recently become very interested in basketball. This is all because of what the women's team at UNL has done this year. As I have mentioned before, they are the first basketball team from Nebraska, men or women, to advance to the sweet sixteen round of the playoffs.

I decided it would be interesting to create a bracket of the sixteen teams and track their progress through the rest of the playoff schedule. Of course, there are plenty of brackets available online, for download and printing, but those don’t do me much good. The brackets just don't make any sense if you can't see the lines. What I decided to do was create my own bracket in a spreadsheet.

I actually had a hard time finding out who the sixteen teams were, however, and which ones were playing each other. The brackets that are available online would, of course, have all that information, but like I said, my screen reader doesn’t interpret them very well. I was finally able to piece my bracket together by reading various news articles about the basketball playoffs. I have learned more about basketball in the last two days than in my previous 39 years. Here are the sixteen teams:

In the Kansas City Region:
Oklahoma versus Notre Dame.
Nebraska versus Kentucky.

In the Dayton Region:
Connecticut versus Iowa State.
Florida State versus Mississippi State.

In the Memphis Region:
Tennessee versus Baylor.
Duke versus San Diego State.

In the Sacramento Region:
Xavier versus Gonzaga.
Stanford versus Georgia.

You may be asking yourself, “Who or what in the heck is Gonzaga?” I asked myself that very same question so I looked it up. Gonzaga is a private Catholic University in Spokane, Washington. So there, you learned something today.

The last time I talked basketball I said that all sixteen teams were coming together in Kansas City for the final tournament, but I found out that was wrong. As shown above, there are four different cities, each hosting four teams. I guess they do that so they can get through the games more quickly, or maybe so more fans have a chance to watch a game. Each region will end up with one winner, and I’m assuming those Final Four teams will come together somewhere. Actually, I think I read that the finals will be in San Antonio.

At the time I am posting this, the Memphis Region and the Sacramento Region have already played their first round of games, but I’m not telling you who won yet. The Lady Huskers play Kentucky tonight. Incidentally, I read that this is also Kentucky’s first trip to the Sweet Sixteen. Too bad one of them has to go home after this. Hope it’s Kentucky, though. Connecticut, or Uconn as they are called, are the big favorite in the playoffs. They are the returning champions and have won their last 74 games, which is basically every game for the last two years. I don’t like the thought of the Huskers playing against them, but I don’t think the two will meet unless they both make it to the championship game. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I would kind of like to see that matchup. But we can't look too far ahead, first they have to get past Kentucky.

I know most of my readers are not basketball fans, I'm not either come to think of it, but this is what’s going on in my life right now, so I wanted to make a complete record of it.

Ecclesiastes 9:10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.

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