Ummm, yeah. If you pay even a little bit of attention to sports, specifically college basketball, you know all about the controversy surrounding Arizona's selection to be part of the NCAA March Madness tournament. They have had some horrible times down in Tucson with 3 coaches in the last 3 years, and another coaching change seems imminent for next year too. Through all this, they managed to sneak into the tournament as a 12 seed (out of 4 brackets of 16 teams, each ranked 1-16) much to the chagrin of almost the entire country, with the exception of the state of Arizona and the Wildcat faithful scattered around said country. I myself am guilty of counting them out. I thought our streak of 24 consecutive (now 25, thank you) NCAA appearances was over. NIT here we come.
Oh, wait. We made it into the tournament! Yippee! Ok, so Arizona is kind of known as more of a finesse team than a tough one. We are not noted for our physical style of play or being really mentally tough either. Does anyone remember the 2005 tourney's Elite 8 game vs. Illinois? Simply referred to as "The Meltdown". Well, anyway, I was kind of expecting a similar sort of thing to happen this year. I optimistically had them penciled in my own bracket as winning the first round then losing in the 2nd round. But realistically I didn't even think that would happen - I just couldn't get myself to count them out in round 1.
My parents know what big sports fans Scott and I are, and graciously ordered the March Madness package from DirecTV so we could watch every single game at their house. THANK YOU MOM AND DAD! My Arizona Wildcats not only won in the first two rounds, they looked GOOD doing it! They beat both teams by double digits! Hooray! They showed both mental and physical toughness to get to this point. This past weekend was a wonderful, blissful immersion in the world of college basketball. Normally that would be enough, but the cherry on top is the fact that Arizona is the last Pac-10 team standing, the lowest seeded team overall that's still in it and NOBODY (in the media at least) thought we deserved to be there. Way to prove them all wrong Wildcats! Ok, so they're playing #1 Louisville this Friday afternoon and I don't know how they'll match up, but I'm feeling optimistic after reading a stat from their 1997 Championship year. They were a 5 seed that year and had to beat 3 (YES 3) #1 seeds to win the tournament that year. They've done it before, and I'm not giving up hope that it can be done again! I'm sure everyone feels this way about their alma mater, but I am so proud to be an Arizona Wildcat. The years I spent there were some of the best years of my life!
GO WILDCATS! BEAR DOWN ARIZONA!
2 comments:
Er, go Hoosiers!?? Hmm, okay, so this year I've had to change my chant to Go Big Ten!!
Too bad your Wildcats are going into the lion's den on Friday afternoon. Louisville is a rough team. I'll be rooting for you... although I've got Louisville winning my bracket so I can't root too hard :)
Your loyalty and spirit for all things ARIZONA are commendable! It is nice to see you so excited about this. I will be rooting for Arizona.
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