Nurse the Hate: 2018 NCAA Tournament Day 1

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The NCAA Tournament is a welcome diversion here in this frozen hellhole that is Northeast Ohio.  It has been cold for five months.  Unless I suddenly find a passion for “ice camping”, I don’t have a reason to be outside for more than two minutes at a stretch.  I was able to keep myself distracted with The Never Ending WSET Diploma Grail, but now I am in a seven week holding pattern awaiting results.  I actually considered taking on an extensive Southern Italian wine course just for the hell of it.  Clearly, I need something to keep my mind and spirit occupied.  I am dancing on the edge of being swallowed whole by seasonal depression.  I feel like the disclaimer of a Chantix ad.  I am close to the brink of a suburban version of cabin fever where I line the windows with foil and focus on typing out a rambling 700 page manifesto.  This pointless opportunity to gamble heavily couldn’t come at a better time.

I want to point out that I have no knowledge of NCAA basketball in 2018.  If you’d like insight on a college basketball game from 1979, I could really help you out.  My father and I used to religiously sit in front of the TV on Sunday afternoons in Erie PA watching college hoops.  In retrospect, this was his version of cabin fever as Erie PA is an even worse frozen hellhole than Cleveland.  The good thing is that college basketball has a consistency to it.  The same teams that were good in 1979 are good now, just with guys I have never seen play.  Duke, North Carolina, Michigan State, Villanova, Virginia, Kansas, and Arizona are ALWAYS good.  To get up to speed in 2018, you just have to toss in Gonzaga and Xavier.  Bam.  We are ready to go.

The first thing I am going to do is bet against Ohio State.  I don’t know anything about Ohio State except I truly enjoy betting against the Buckeyes.  Having spent two somewhat miserable years living in Columbus, the consistent backdrop was the population all wearing unattractive Ohio State themed clothing.  There is a consistent hum in the air of blind enthusiasm towards Ohio State’s sports teams that is just a tinge below Jones Town in its zealocy.  Columbus is a good bet for a town that will commit mass suicide if something breaks the wrong way for the Ohio State football team one day.

Ohio State Guy always thinks Ohio State is going to win.  He is going to get the boys together and knock back some Michelob Ultras for the game.  They might just fire up the grill and get into the bourbon later.  The wives will put their cute Ohio State tops on and chat it up in the kitchen.  When the Buckeyes lose, the boys will get together and work out a story to exonerate the Bucks from guilt, usually something involving bad officiating.  Think of it as a sports version of the Republican House commitee findings that nothing could have been screwy in the last election, much less Russia pulling for the incompetent guy.  Swap out “Putin” for “Refs” and you get the idea.  

The thing I notice this year is that Ohio State guy isn’t coming into the tournament with his usual swagger.  Even he is aware that the Buckeyes are a little soft this year.  That is a five alarm fire as far as I am concerned.  I am going to place a wager on South Dakota State, a school that I knew existed in theory but had no tangible proof existed until now.  From what data I could glean, I learned that this is South Dakota State’s third trip in a row to the Tournament.  The game is in Boise, so these guys won’t have that small school star struck quality to them when they get blown out early trying to figure out if this is really happening.  They play good defense, which is a key to covering these games.  I just need them to hang around.  South Dakota State +8.  

I went to a school in The MAC.  The MAC conference used to get some respect as they reliably sent a player to the NBA each year and the teams always had a certain pesky quality to the them.  These teams are made up of Midwestern guys that are really good basketball players but just can’t quite cut the mustard physically to get up to that next level of “the big schools”.  For example, a team like Buffalo will have a really good two guard that can score at will on the other guys in the MAC.  That’s because he’s 6 foot 3 and can jump 34 inches.  He’s The Man in the MAC.  Unfortunately for him, he is now going to fly out to the West Coast to play Arizona where all of the guys are a minimum of 6 foot 8 and can all jump 43 inches with wing spans like fucking condors.  Buffalo has three guys that can ball.  Arizona has 12 guys that can ball, and 10 guys on a practice team that could likely sneak onto Buffalo’s roster.  These games always go the same way.  Buffalo will play their guts out in the first half.  They will get gassed and then Arizona blows them out of the water.  Arizona -9.