MJ 2-4 Just Sounds Like an Awful Nickname

I wonder if anyone (besides this one BA I know) would've noticed that this Friday at 9:30 PM in the Queen City of Buffalo, NY is the stage for a special edition version of Family Feud. That is, Family Feud with an actual audience of 20,000 people, basketballs, and the feud is within one family. Namely, the Joseph family. With my borderline creepy fascination with Kris Joseph, KJ 3-2, TGBPWHEOWEL, whatever you want to call him, I did not even notice that he had a brother playing D1 basketball for the Vermont Catamounts. Side bar, catamount is another name for puma. So my boy Kris is playing against his older brother Maurice, a guard for Vermont. Now, I can see where this is going. Kris takes Maurice (#24 for when you're watching the game) to school a few times and then the announcers will not stop talking about the fact that they're brothers. Who knows, maybe they won't go into double digits with the times they mention that Leo Rautins is Andy's father. Or maybe not. So special thanks to the BA who informed me of this fraternal matchup.

So on to the bigger picture of March Madness. I see some intriguing matchups (but will not give away my picks until the brackets lock on Thursday). In the South Region, I think 15 seed Robert Morris looks primed to make a run. Not only is the road to the Final Four paved for them with the blood of Scottie Reynolds and Villanova, history is on their side. Robert Morris is a founding father. What other important revolutionary figures have colleges named after them in past tournaments?

• George Washington University, named after first President of the United States George Washington (obviously)
• George Mason University, named after Bill of Rights architect George Mason
• Davidson College, named after Revolutionary War Brigadier General William Lee Davidson
• Georgetown University, named after a town named after the grandfather of King George III, mentioned several times in the Declaration of Independence as someone who pretty much sucked

Now let's look at some results from the past few March Madness tournaments to see how these revolutionary schools did.

• 2006- George Washington wins in the first round, Georgetown makes the Sweet 16 as a 7 seed, and George Mason makes the Final Four as an 11 seed
• 2007 (off year)- Davidson and GW lose in the first round, Georgetown makes the Final Four as a 2 seed
• 2008- George Mason loses in the first round, Georgetown loses in the second round (to Davidson), Davidson makes it to the Elite 8 as a 10 seed
• 2009 (off year)- Robert Morris loses in the first round

As you can clearly see, the performance of revolutionary schools depends on whether or not it is an even-numbered year. The moral of the story: bet everything you have on Georgetown facing Robert Morris in the Final Four.

So that takes care of the South and Midwest regions. West, easy. There's this one team there that's pretty good. And orange. Both are factors in them doing very, very well. That leaves one Final Four spot up for grabs in the East region. We'll take a look at the most intriguing match up. Team Let Down vs. Team Disgrace. Texas vs. Wake Forest. One team who started 17-0 and then lost pretty much everything. Another team who lost in the first round as a 4 seed last year, as well as losing to William and Mary, as well as 12th place in the ACC Miami (twice!). This is the selection committee's middle finger to these two teams. This is like March Madness's version of a drunk bum fight...possibly entertaining, probably means nothing. This is just a battle to see which one of them gets mauled in the second round by Kentucky.

While this was a short post, I'll try to keep updating it through the week. Sorry if you don't like sports, but it's all March Madness all the time until April. And maybe some other things so I don't lose 95% of my readers who hate it when I talk about sports.