Bounced

Due to the intensity of my migraine tonight, I had to miss a concert that my friend Julie organized, which included some of my favorite bands including Pete Francis (formerly of Dispatch) and another group that she introduced me to, Throwback.

Normally, I would be pretty pissed about sitting in my room all day with the lights off, watching tivo'd reruns of Law & Order: SVU, and missing a concert that I really wanted to go to. However, the headache ended up being a little bit of a blessing in disguise because I was able to stay home and watch two really great NCAA basketball games that I would have otherwise missed.

Let me preface this by saying that I really enjoy sports, but quite frankly, college basketball tends to bore me. In fact, like most people across the country, I don't even watch it until the final three weeks in March. I fill out my bracket based on the following criteria: if the school has a silly name (ex., Gonzaga, Pepperdine), if the school happens to be Big Ten (I support the conference... unless, of course, it happens to be the University of Michigan, who I would root against in a tricycle race), and finally (when all else fails) if the school is known for its basketball program. But mostly, I rely on the goofiness of the name.

So imagine my surprise to find myself literally on the edge of my deathbed and filled with complete excitement to watch two games go into overtime back-to-back. And yes, one of the teams is a Big Ten school.

Sure, the first game was cool with West Virginia beating the shit out of Louisville (or "Lullvull", if you're a Kentuckian), leading by as many as 20 and by 13 at the half, and ending up losing the game in overtime. But that doesn't even compare to watching Illinois (a team I've had a lot of respect for since the season tipped off) jump out to a nice lead over Arizona, be ahead only by 2 at the half, completely lose it in the second half and be down by about 15, and then make up all that ground in under 4 minutes. And overtime was equally breath-taking, with the Illini (whose only loss this season came at the hands of my Ohio State Buckeyes) eventually pulling out a one-point victory.

Now, I didn't actually fill out a bracket this year, but if I had... well, I would have picked the West Virginia Mountaineers over the Louisville Cardinals. After all, I've always been kind of afraid of/totally into Mountain Men. But there is no way I would have gone against the Big Ten's Fighting Illini (which is much better than Arizona Wildcats -- I mean, come on... how many different types of CATS are there in the NCAA?).

Tomorrow, there is a chance that two more Big Ten teams could make it to the Final Four... but can a Wisconsin Badger really beat a Tar Heel from North Carolina? I don't even know what a Tar Heel is... but it sounds like it wouldn't go down without a fight. (Oh yeah, and I hear that UNC is a pretty good team, too.) But a Spartan over a Kentucky Wildcat? Yeah, that sounds about right to me.

So while all of hold-your-breath, buzzer-beating basketball was enjoyable, I don't think it helped my migraine. If this migraine were a basketball team in the Big Dance, I would probably pick it to win over Pepperdine, though I hate it nearly as much as I hate UMichigan.