The Badgers are road pizza.
There’s my first prediction, boys and girls, on this day when we are all required by law to Know Exactly What Is Going To Happen.
The Badgers, aka Wisconsin, aka your No. 4 seed in the East: You are done. You are Terrier kibble, aka the Terriers of mighty Wofford, aka my favorite team in this year’s NCAA tournament.
I like Wofford because A) they are the Terriers, and B) they have never been in Da Tournament, or even the NIT, in all their long and mostly obscure history. Wofford, just so you know, is a former NAIA school from Spartanburg, S.C. Its enrollment is just less than 1,500, which makes it smaller than Saint Francis by 500 or so students. Every once in a while you’ll see it pop up on the agate page, as part of a football score line that reads “The Citadel 42, Wofford 10” or some such thing.
Here’s something you should know about the Terriers, though: They’re pretty good at hoops.
They beat Georgia this year. They beat South Carolina, which is like, well, Saint Francis beating Indiana. They were one possession away from beating Pitt, way back at the front of the season.
They went 15-3 in the Southern Conference and then won the conference tournament by beating Appalachian State like a throw rug, and now they get Wisconsin. And if I’ve spent entirely too much time talking about them already … well, that’s because Selection Sunday is for them.
Selection Sunday is the day the little guy gets his moment, the Woffords and Winthrops and Arkansas-Pine Bluffs. This is the day Lehigh gets to cheer like crazy because it’s earned the right to get beat 85-40 by Kansas. It’s a day for the Mean Green of North Texas State to draw the Meaner Purple of Kansas State. A day for the Ohio Bobcats to leap around like 8-year-olds on Christmas morning because now, by golly, they get to become an hors d’oeuvre for Georgetown. Woo-hoo!
Soon enough the ball will go up and it will be time for the power brokers, the Kansases and Dukes and Syracuses, to take the headlines hostage. There’ll be plenty of time to debate whether UTEP-over-Butler or Cornell-over-Temple will be the annual 12-beats-a-5. Or whether New Mexico, even at 29-4, is over-seeded at No. 3. Or whether Purdue without Robbie Hummel (and maybe Lewis Jackson) should have been a 4, and whether dangerous and perhaps underseeded Siena should be giddy at the prospect of getting the Boilermakers in the first round.
Did Kentucky get the shaft as the No. 1 seed in the East, because in the second round they might run into a Texas team that, even if it’s gone Dixie the last month-and-a-half, is still rattlesnake-dangerous? Is Baylor the No. 3 seed you do not want to play? If Oklahoma State gets Ohio State in the second round, will some joker call it the OSU Bowl?
Later for that.
Later.
For now, let’s talk about mighty Wofford, and why Wisconsin should be very, very afraid. Let’s give a shout-out to Sam Houston, and also to Robert Morris. Let’s consider the state of Morgan State, Murray State and East Tennessee State, and ponder whether Vermont was feeling like a guy wired with dynamite Sunday because it drew Syracuse in Buffalo.
My guess is no.
