Butler, Baby Wipes, and Bilas...

How did I manage to schedule a 6 pm appointment on the day of the Men's NCAA College Basketball Championship?! For friggin' sake, I've got three different brackets taped to my living room wall, I started a blog as I have sold my soul to ESPN and CBS coverage of the tournament, and have a tattoo of Bryant Gumbal on my right butt cheek (okay the last one I promise was a joke).

Maybe two months ago when I set the date and time of the meeting I was subconsciously vacating myself emotionally from a potential and painful loss.

Well Butler's loss that is...

When my appt was over and I left the office around 8pm, I hesitantly turned the car stereo knob to the scratchy, barely audible, station broadcasting the game. I was fully expecting a blowout - to hear eardrum shattering cheers from Blue Devil fans. Surely Scheyer had delivered at least a Walmart sized Easter basket of threes by now.

To my satisfaction, I was completely wrong (insert "I am a glutton for punishment"). Butler was in fact down only by a deuce heading into the second half.

My drive home was speedy, albeit anxiety ridden. Probably the way Jay Bilas feels when he suspects his barber is leaving a bit too much on the sides of his normally militaristic buzzed do'.

You didn't have to get a ruler out to measure my hair, or at least the follicles standing erect on the back of my neck as my Swedish auto raced the streets of the Pacific Northwest searching for my living room's television signal. The radio blared sound bytes of close game and I couldn't help but fathom that this coach from Indiana, this guy with the boyish good looks and team full of Bullpups might just be able to pull of this Cinderella story.

Tenacious D (defense that is), kept the Bulldogs within a few points up until the last minute when they came within one -- a single basket separating them from modern day Hoosier status.

Hayward, the basketball man child, the player who I thought all season resembled a kid in my kindergarten class that sported a Kool-aid mustache everyday, had a chance to win it, but in a flash of glory, his shot just barely missed.

Zoubek's free-throw sealed the victory for Dukies everywhere -- the game was over and the Cinderella story was history. The carriage that pulled Butler to the championship game turned back into a pumpkin.

On the other hand, as a fan, I couldn't have wished for a more intense final five minutes. This was no blowout. The school with barely 4,000 students produced a team worthy of rivaling any Big East, SEC, ACC, or Whatever CC, the tournament had to throw at them.

Coach Steven's team put up a valiant effort. He's friggin' 33 years-old. In fact I believe -- about as old as one of Bill Raftery's ingrown toenails!

The Bulldogs will be back-- not the Diaper Dandy's of this season. I envision them sporting "Pull-ups" and refusing the Baby Wipes next year. Sorry Dick.

Putting the "M" in Madness!

Somewhere, Dick Vitale's wife is searching the home's storage room for the emergency resuscitation machine, as Duke and Butler are just hours away from tonight's championship game.

He'll need it, but so will Joe Lunardi and all those who predicted that Butler would be ousted from the tournament in the early rounds. On the other hand, I didn't choose them to make it to the Final Four or even the Elite 8, so consider me lumped in with the rest of the nay sayers.

The reality is that most connoisseurs of March Madness typically expect to see a Michigan State, a UConn, or a Duke in the final day of play, not a team from the Horizon League, who received about as much airtime as Philippine Idol did on ESPN this season.

So I ask myself the question: During the regular season, what brings a team to the forefront of media commentary, not including academic suspensions or sex scandals?

Tradition is the first reason that comes to mind, particularly on the East Coast, where more than a handful of schools have long standing traditions of winning in their respective conferences or in the tournament. North Carolina, Indiana, Wake Forest, just to name a few. On the other hand, UCLA, a team with one of the most celebrated winning histories in college basketball, has dropped off the radar in recent years. One could attribute this to the scattered personality the Bruin's have exhibited in the past five years or so, but then I think of a team like Georgia Tech, who not until this year has produced much excitement, is a regular on the nightly broadcast lineup.

High Scoring, energetic players also bring a team to a nationally talked about level. With Kentucky for example, the "Tradition" box has already been checked, but in combination with a long standing win history, they also bring forth players like Wall and Cousins, who by any one's standards are noteworthy of media attention.

This year's tournament big dog is certainly Duke, and through much research (no beakers or DNA extractions involved) are the favorite to beat Butler later on this evening. Not only do they bring a coach whose last name is more difficult to spell than the leading Russian figure skating duo, they have earned themselves consistent NCAA tournament appearances in the last 15 years.

Duke's players aren't too shabby either. Singler, Scheyer, and Smith account for the majority of the Blue Devil's scoring, and they can rotate big men like Zoubek and the Plumlees in and out like musical chairs.

Their demeanor is also what makes opponents and many a Duke hater so frustrated. They're always so calm and collected with the exception of maybe a Zoubek flying elbow or two.

Unlike Duke, Butler can't begin to compete with the Blue Devil's tradition, nor do they have a trio that has been of any mention this year up until the tournament. The squad with two guys that I can never separate (Matt Howard and Gordon Hayward), rely on defense and a well thought-out half court game, which might thwart even Kzryzewski's best strategy for a victory.

However, while the Bulldogs may have elicited more headlines than Duke in the past few weeks, just as a result of pulling on their Cinderella slipper, ultimately, the big question is whether or not the Bulldogs will return next season, and the season after that and so on to establish themselves as a legitimate and consistent threat in the whole of the NCAA.

I sure hope the carriage doesn't return to pumpkin form, and we see Coach Steven's team for years to come.