"It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!"

March means one thing to me (and it's not spring, shamrocks, green beer, or lions and lambs).

March means NCAA men's basketball tournament time!

It’s difficult to grow up in Indiana and not be a basketball fan, especially if your mom and grandmother are pretty enthusiastic sports fans in general. Yes, I said mom and grandmother, not dad and grandfather. I come from a long line of female sports fans. The men in my family have never been particularly crazy about athletics.

Men’s college basketball is probably my favorite spectator sport. I don’t watch the NBA because I believe in things like team play, the calling of fouls and traveling, and the importance of making one’s free throws.

My family followed Indiana University basketball when I was young - eons ago during Bobby Knight’s reign and their 1976 undefeated NCAA championship season. However, I was never a Bobby Knight fan and this caused much strife in my household where, no matter how many chairs he threw or players he shoved, he was still considered to be a basketball coaching god. (Feel free to visualize me rolling my eyes here.)

I went to Ball State University (of David Letterman fame), where I used my student ID to attend as many basketball games as possible during my four years there. I was a sophomore when Ray McCallum (now the head coach at the University of Detroit Mercy, where he coaches his son, Ray McCallum, Jr.) led the Ball State University Cardinals to their very first NCAA tournament appearance, losing in the first round.

My husband, Phillip, grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. He used to “bleed University of Kentucky Wildcat blue,” but not so much recently, as he’s grown disgusted with their coaching choices, their recruiting strategy, and their building-future-NBA-stars-who-leave-school-early mindset.

So, instead, in the past twelve or so years, he and I have settled into a pattern of cheering for a small local university that you may not have heard of until last year – the Butler University Bulldogs. Located about five miles from our house, Butler plays in the historic Hinkle Fieldhouse, perhaps best known as the site of the Indiana state high school championship game in the movie “Hoosiers” (and in the real-life scenario that movie is based on – the 1954 state championship game won by tiny Milan High School).

Stopping just short of buying season tickets, we typically attend three or four Butler home games every year.  Butler is truly the "little school that could" and has arguably become the strongest performing mid-major school during the past decade. They have been coached over the past twenty years by a series of talented young men who have ingrained “The Butler Way” into each of their teams (Barry Collier – now Butler’s Athletic Director, Thad Matta – now the coach at Ohio State, Todd Lickliter – who went on to coach for three years at the University of Iowa, and, finally, Brad Stevens – who has quickly become one of the most successful young coaches in NCAA history).

Indianapolis is the home of the NCAA and we’ve been lucky enough to host more than our fair share of men’s and women’s NCAA Final Four events in the past few years. Last year was one of those years, so Phillip and I had put in for the ticket lottery, finding out about six months before the game that we had actually been selected for Final Four tickets! We decided that we’d use the tickets if any of the teams were teams we wanted to see, but we might consider selling them if they weren’t.

At a game early last season, when the Bulldogs were looking particularly good, I joked with Phillip that maybe Butler would be in the Final Four. We laughed at the concept of the tiny “home team” playing in the Final Four and didn’t think much about it until the tournament started and they started to win. Then they kept winning, and kept winning, until we finally found ourselves in Lucas Oil Stadium screaming like crazy, both when they beat Michigan State to go to the championship game against Duke and when they lost to Duke by a heartbreaking two points.

Although I’m not making that kind of prediction for this year, the beauty of the NCAA tournament is that whole “Hoosiers” scenario where, on any given day, any team can beat any other team. There are always the stunners. The upsets. The little teams who knock the highest seeds out in the first or second round.

Phillip and I will, of course, be having our annual personal bracket battle. We fill out our brackets and hang them on the fridge, tracking wins and losses religiously throughout the tournament.

What do we play for? What would any basketball-crazy couple with two German Shepherds and a small backyard play for?

The loser gets solo doggie-doodie scooping duty for the following three months!

Talk about motivation!

Edited to add:

The Butler Bulldogs are in the tournament. They got an automatic bid by winning the Horizon League Championship, beating Milwaukee (a team that had beaten them twice during the regular season) in the league's tournament.  They are an eight seed (a bit higher than had been predicted) and play Old Dominion in the first round. 

Our brackets are filled out and hanging on the fridge. The red marker for mistakes/losses and yellow highlighter for correct choices/wins are ready on the kitchen counter.

LET'S DANCE!