It's March, but where's the Madness?

Correction appended

It’s official. President Obama has a better March Madness bracket than I do. The President of the United States made his choices based on basic assumptions about teams’ coaches or best players. Every other person who knows nothing about NCAA basketball just picked the highest seeds.

I spent Sunday through Thursday watching every ESPN show, reading every sports blog online and painstakingly analyzing how certain teams did against big men or fast guards. When the weekend came along, the people who knew absolutely nothing about college basketball picked almost all of the games correctly, simply by looking at the rankings. The first two rounds confirmed that Scottie really doesn’t know.

By no means is my bracket shot to hell, however. I have 13 of the 16 teams remaining, and all of my Final Four teams are still in the running. Yet what happened to the actual madness of March Madness? The NCAA Tournament has that nickname because teams like Louisville could actually lose the close game to Siena in the second round of the tournament. Teams like Princeton and Santa Clara (a No. 13 and a No. 15 seed, respectively) used to beat teams like UCLA and Arizona (a No. 4 seed and a No. 2 seed, respectively) in the first round. Even George Mason (a No. 11 seed) made it to the Final Four three years ago. But ever since George Mason pulled off one of the more spectacular and surprising runs through the rough-and-tumble bracket, the tournament has lost its madness.

Last year, as many people know, the Final Four consisted of all four first-ranked teams for the first time in the history of the tournament, and the last two years have featured two top-ranked teams in the finals, which had only happened four times in the past.

While the Final Four, especially the championship game, showcased the best of college basketball, I missed the madness.

It used to be a sign that people did not know anything about the NCAA Tournament if they drew up “chalkboard” brackets, but now this method is regarded as a safe bet.

Arizona, the college with the longest active NCAA Tournament appearance streak, is the only remaining Sweet Sixteen team that does not fulfill a predicted bracket. Besides Arizona, the bracket is entirely predictable from a rankings’ standpoint.

Purdue arguably was, and is now confirmed to be, the best five seed in the tournament, and a majority of the nation probably had them in the Sweet 16 or even further. Two regionals even have the top four seeds in the tournament remaining — this never used to happen.

Not only have the upsets been few and far between, but even the worst team left in the field is arguably one of the top-10 best basketball programs in history.

No matter what happens for the remainder of this year’s tournament, I will be glued to the television and will enjoy watching the country’s top programs compete. Yet if there is an Elite Eight that features all four No. 1 seeds and all four No. 2 seeds, I will be disgusted.

Not because the basketball won’t be enjoyable — it will be — but because the madness has been removed from March Madness, and it makes me sick.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

March Madness is the best time of the year because of the exciting thrillers and, more importantly, the upsets. There is no other major sports championship that is more susceptible to having the Davids conquering the Goliaths than this tournament.

But this year, the wicked stepsisters killed the helper mice and stole the glass slippers, and as a result, Cinderella did not make it to the ball.

I went to the Wachovia Center last Thursday to watch the American-Villanova game and the Virginia Commonwealth-UCLA game. Both games were perfect examples of how upsets failed to happen. American had a 10-point lead at halftime, and guard Garrison Carr tied an NCAA Tournament first-round record for three-pointers in the first half of a game.

Yet Villanova’s consistency and superior coaching pushed it past the deficit and into the next round, leaving the losers to limp home.

The UCLA game was an even better example of an underdog that just couldn’t muster enough fight. After overcoming a second-half deficit, Virginia Commonwealth put the ball in the hands of point guard Eric Maynor, its best player, for the last shot, but the ball refused to drop.

As Virginia Commonwealth took a time out before the last shot, I turned to my friend, a fellow UCLA fan, and told her that everything about March Madness said that Maynor would make the shot.

He missed.

I was in shock as UCLA squeaked out a win. I left the Wachovia Center with mixed emotions: I was happy that UCLA won but somehow disappointed.

The first round featured two overtime games, and only four games had last-second attempts for the win. That simply is not March Madness!

Everyone expects that in the NBA playoffs two of the best four teams will make it to the finals. But it is not widely predicted that Louisville and North Carolina, arguably the two best teams in the country, will face each other in the end, though Obama picked them. That is the beauty of the tournament. Nobody knows what is going to happen, and everyone loves it.

March Madness is celebrated for its Cinderella stories and last-second shockers. Where have they gone?

Arizona, Purdue, Gonzaga or Xavier: Will one of you please make the Final Four? I need some madness this March.

Correction

An earlier version of this article said that, in the 1996 NCAA Tournament, Princeton was a No. 15 seed and UCLA was a No. 2 seed. In fact, Princeton was a No. 13 seed, and UCLA was a No. 4 seed.