Picking NCAA tourney victors tough, but fun

The NCAA basketball tournament is now two days old (three, if you spent all of Saturday glued to the tube instead of polishing the dog or walking the truck and are a bit slow getting to the newspaper). If you’re like me, you’re getting a bit punchy. That’s punchy. Not paunchy.

And if you’re like me, I’ve got one thing I really want to say to you. OK. Make it two.

First, I’m sorry (take that however you want). And second, man, did you ever screw up your tourney bracket.

First, a quick disclaimer to satisfy all authority figures, including my mother, my boss, my boss’s boss, and my mother’s boss. (If you know my mom, whom I love and cherish, you’ll realize that the last person I referred to is an entirely fictional character I conjured up on a lark).

I do not bet on games. I do not bet on dogs. I do not bet on horses. And filling out an NCAA bracket and watching all those teams lose (early in the tournament) is not a gambling activity.

With that said, I do occasionally try my hand at tourney prognostication. For fun.

As one of this publication’s college basketball writers, I’ve got an advantage. At least that’s what they tell me. I just haven’t figured out what it is.

As it turns out, I’m not too good at this bracket-filler-outer thing.

There are reasons for this: First, I don’t watch much TV. Second. I love underdogs.

Therefore, I tend to predict upsets based entirely on the “wouldn’t-it-be-cool” theorem of bracketeology. And even when I pick a favorite, I find myself rooting against my team when an upstart team threatens some true March Madness.

This year, things were gonna be different. I was gonna make phone calls and read magazines and watch TV and even listen to a few valuable minutes of blather from Dick Vitale.

Instead, I opted for this: I’d ask Alyssa.

She’s my niece. She’s 5, and the best thing about her (other than her exceptional Holyoke cuteness, of course), is the fact that she has opinions. Man, does she have opinions.

And as a wishy-washy bracketeer who hems and haws over even the No. 1 vs. No. 16 matchups, opinions were exactly what I needed.

Two problems: She lives quite a distance away, has a busy social calendar, and I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to work me in for a two-hour hoop summit on such short notice.

So, since I had no help, and since I had no confidence in my own ability to pluck the NCAA rabbits out of my decidedly and perpetually unmagical hat, I did the only thing I could think of.

I filled out two brackets.

One, I filled with my what-ifs and wouldn’t-it-be-cool teams. I picked Hofstra (because I’d seen them). I picked Gonzaga (because the name’s cool, and everyone knows they’re March marauders).

And then I filled out another bracket, the good, old-fashioned way.

I guessed. Actually, that’s not really fair. I guessed on the first one. On the second one, I asked George.

I’ve got a lot of faith in George. George knows the randomness that defines March Madness. And he’s not ambiguous. He’s black and white. Odd or even. Heads or tails.

I took George into a vacant room, sat at a table, and took a good look at the NCAA tourney field.

“Where do you want to start, George?” I asked, looking at the shiny quarter in my flipping hand.

A few minutes later, George had told me everything I needed to know.

His final four: Gonzaga and Butler. Kentucky. And his eventual champ?

Georgetown. No kidding.

John Holyoke is a NEWS sportswriter. His e-mail address is jholyoke@bangordailynews.net