Yet Another Thing I Like About The NCAA Basketball Tournament

Filed under: Self-Referential | By DrHGuy | March 24, 2006 at 5:29 am

The Duke Loss & The DrHGuy Family

Following Duke’s loss last night, the Prodigal Son & I were bummed about Duke’s non-stellar performance and the game’s outcome.

Being younger, more resilient, and the poster child for ADHD, he zipped through the grieving process, skipping Steps #2 and #4 altogether, and was emotionally re-acclimated for the next game by the time the final commercial was over. I, on the other hand, didn’t fully recover for another 8-12 minutes, most of which was spent running through a series of “what-ifs.” After all, Duke performed as though the entire team were afflicted with a severe gastrointestinal disorder for which the team physician had prescribed a medication with the unfortunate side-effect of significant drowsiness while LSU was ferocious, arguably playing their best game of the year, and yet, Duke had a lead with 2:32 to go and the game was still within reach into the last minute of play.

So, What’s To Like In This Tragedy?

Here’s the part I like – when the final buzzer sounded, the Prodigal and I, as well as anyone who could see the scoreboard or hear the score announced, knew who had won.

There was no need to factor in the degree of difficulty, average in the Style Points, deduct the penalty for slipping, gasp in disbelief at the Bulgarian judge’s evaluation, weigh in the appropriateness of the music or the flow of the program, throw out the low score and high score, add in the compulsory school figures, and run all the numbers through a complex statistical formula. Nope, to paraphrase Keats,