The Madness of March

"There are certain RULES that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie." — Randy, "Scream"

March Madness is the name commonly given to the NCAA Men's College Basketball Tournament, and madness describes what happened the past four days as the field was whittled from 64 to 16. It was a lot of carnage. More than 11.5 million brackets were submitted on ESPN, and by Saturday afternoon there were no perfect brackets left.

Like Randy said in "Scream" of horror movies, there are typically rules to follow when creating a bracket. One of the common ones has been beware of the Twelve seeds. Typically each year a Twelve seed upsets a five seed. So those making brackets always look for the juicy 12-5 upset.

Accept this year, all four Twelve seeds lost in the first round. In fact, all four five seeds and all of the four seeds advanced, somewhat defying logic. Instead, the dangerous seed in this tournament was the three seed — two of which were upset on opening day.

So, yeah, no surprise there's no perfect brackets.

Of course the perennial underachievers didn't disappoint. Virginia, a hot team all season, bombed out in the second round. So, too, did top-seeded Villanova. Meanwhile, Kentucky and Duke have gone to the round of 16 and Louisville, a team considered a likely candidate to bow out in an opening game upset, instead is in the round of 16. Go figure.

While Kentucky, the overall No. 1 seed and the only undefeated team in college basketball this season, is still a favorite to win the tournament, the last four days have shown anything is possible. Accept, apparently, Twelve seeds following tradition and pulling an upset...