This year, 2024, marks the 42nd year (should be 43 years in a row since the tournament was canceled in 2020 due to COVID) that I have picked at least one NCAA men’s basketball bracket. I have copies of many of them, including the one from 1981, when I picked my Louisville Cardinals to win the championship. That was the year they lost their first game on a halfcourt shot. Some people might be deterred after that jarring experience, but not me! Then again, I was only 5 when it happened.
Generally speaking, I routinely finish near the top of whatever March Madness group I enter. It’s still a fair amount of luck, but now that I’m not watching hundreds of games each season, it’s likely more luck than skill trying to make picks. Regardless, I’ve always found joy in college basketball – so much so that I created an online NCAA tournament several years ago that was used as a bracket game by multiple news outlets. I also ran a fantasy-style NCAA tournament game for several years for fun, complete with full stats.
While these items required a lot of work, there’s one year that, for many, will live in infamy – 1990.
Of course, 1990 was before the Internet was used by millions (now billions). ESPN had had a good decade under its belt and would eventually create an online bracket played by millions of fans. But this was still years away.
Hanging out in my mom’s apartment in eighth grade, we watched as much basketball as possible. My brother and I watched Big Monday, as our favorite Big East teams battled. We played a lot of nerf basketball, too – he was always Syracuse, and I was always Pittsburgh. We were also enthralled by West Coast basketball, both with UNLV and Loyola Marymount, specifically with its superstars, Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble. As a lefthander, Hank was instantly my favorite player outside of Jason Mathews and the other Pitt players.
“Off the court,” I kept my own rankings. Sure, my favorite teams always bubbled to the top, but I considered other teams for the rankings as well. Sometimes I would give a rundown of the rankings to anyone who listened, although it was usually a crowd of one.
But my fervor for college basketball this year wasn’t just because of the tournament. My beloved Cardinals were having a pretty good season. Before the season began, I had applied for and was accepted as a ballboy. This meant for a handful of games during the season, I sat literally under the basket at the games. Before the game and at halftime, I stood on the court with the team as they shot around, occasionally grabbing a rebound or two. And if there was sweat on the floor, I would rush out with a towel to wipe it off.
This was a profound experience. Somehow, I was able to be a ballboy for some of the higher-profile games, including New Mexico (with eventual NBA star Luc Longley) and ranked Georgia Tech (Brian Oliver, Dennis Scott and eventual NBA star Kenny Anderson formed the famed trio “Lethal Weapon 3”). This was tough to beat for an eighth-grader, even though Kenny Anderson once reached over my back and stole a rebound from me. Didn’t he realize I was going to pass it to him for a 3 anyway?
Once March hit, everything was lining up for an amazing tournament. While Pitt was struggling, Louisville looked to be a potential contender, along with LMU and Georgia Tech. Then tragedy struck when Hank Gathers collapsed on the court during the game and died of a heart attack. For many on the sports world, and even outside of it, it just didn’t seem possible for a healthy individual at the peak of his career to die like that. Everyone was mourning, but the brackets were announced, and Loyola decided to play on.
Maybe it was because I watched so much basketball, or maybe it was just luck, but outside of UNLV, I wasn’t too impressed with many of the top-rated teams in the rankings. I couldn’t pick Louisville too far since they were in UNLV’s bracket. I couldn’t believe LMU dropped to an 11 seed because Kimble and the others were still good. And Georgia Tech was looming with a four seed. I submitted my bracket for our family contest and watched the games in earnest.
The rest is history. LMU made a run to the Elite 8, where they were beaten by UNLV. Georgia Tech outlasted sixth-seeded Minnesota for another spot in the Final Four. Third-seeded Duke bested 1 seed UConn, and
fourth-seeded Arkansas beat 10th-seeded Texas. It was a wacky Elite 8 with so many lower-seeded teams, and only one 1 seed made it to the Final Four.
My bracket, however, was nearly unscathed. I missed some first- and second-round games, but I predicted all but or two of the Elite 8 and got the Final Four all correct. I went with UNLV over Duke for the title, which was also correct.
Conventional scoring for the NCAA bracket games follows that each round has the same number of points – first-round games are worth 1, second round 2, on up to the championship game being worth 32 points (in the first round, there are 32 games, 16 games in the second, etc.). Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of my paper bracket anymore, but I believe I had 188 points, which was by far the most points I had ever scored, and had ever seen scored during our family contests.
Each year that ESPN has a bracket game, I always check to see the highest score. It usually comes in at the 180-200 range. I’ve always felt that if the Internet had existed back in 1990, I would have been on the leaderboard, if not at the top of the leaderboard. And I sort of feel as if that was my one shot of getting my picks correct enough to be on top. Now, I’m just happy to pull off an upset or two and select the champion. But I’ll never forget the spring of 1990, when everything aligned, even if it was just in a tiny bedroom in my mom’s apartment.
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