King Kaufman's Sports Daily
NCAA Tournament Day 1 is a little light on upsets, though Alabama and LSU would disagree. And Illinois looks vulnerable but wins.
Editor's note: The entries in this column have been rearranged to appear in chronological order.
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March 17, 2005 | 1 p.m. EST: I'm dug in. I should have done a better job stocking the joint with food and drink. I live in a St. Louis neighborhood that's traditionally Irish, and St. Patrick's Day is a big deal here. As the Tournament gets underway around 11:20 a.m. local time, my street is blocked off and there are green-haired revelers drinking beer as they pass by my front window on their way to the parade.
But I'll be OK.
I'm watching on CBS broadcast. I know that as a big-shot sportswriter I should have four big-screen TVs and the satellite package to watch every game simultaneously, but we're doing this together, so I'm watching the Tournament the same way the vast majority of you are, taking whatever game CBS thinks I'd be interested in based on where I live. That means I'll get a steady diet of Big 12 games, but CBS usually does a good job of switching to whatever game is heating up.
So while I'm headed for Niagara-Oklahoma momentarily, the first game of the day is Kentucky-Eastern Kentucky, a 2-15 matchup with obvious geographical meaning as well as the story line that the Colonels' coach, Travis Ford, was a star guard at Kentucky.
In the first minute, Matt Witt comes away with a long rebound and leads a two-on-one break. Making a good decision, he pulls up at the elbow and hits a 15-footer. Eastern Kentucky has the lead! It's 2-0! The first bucket of the Tournament goes to a prohibitive underdog!
Two minutes later it's 8-3. But Eastern Kentucky hangs around. By the first media timeout Kentucky gunner Patrick Sparks has picked up his second foul and the score is only 10-9 Kentucky. A minute later Eastern Kentucky takes an 11-10 lead. Could this be an upset, right off the bat?
I don't think so, but by this time Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Alabama have started, and the 12th-seeded Panthers are off to a 14-9 lead. My whistle is officially whetted.
It's 22-13 Kentucky by the time CBS switches me to the Niagara-Oklahoma game, a 14 vs. 3. Look! Niagara's 3-pointers are falling, and the Purple Eagles build an early 11-6 lead ...
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What is it with national chain restaurants and weird racial quotas in their commercials? A TGI Friday's ad in heavy rotation has three guys sitting at a table. From left to right the boys are white, black, white. They look up and -- whoa! -- three smokin' hotties coming this way! From left to right: ... you're ahead of me, right?
The spot looks like a recent Outback Steakhouse ad in which three women are sitting at a table in the same formation. They look up and smile as three hunky waiters bring their food: White, black, white. What would have happened if one pair in any of those four trios had switched places? I bet much research was done on that question and the answer wasn't pretty.
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2:55 p.m. EST: Niagara hung with Oklahoma for a good while, but with about 13 minutes to go, the Sooners scored on back-to-back alley-oops to go ahead by 11, as if to say, "We're the athletic, big-conference team around here."
Niagara not only doesn't have major-conference athleticism, outside of Juan Mendez, who's been spending the afternoon impressing millions of people who've never seen him before, it doesn't even have a band. A local high school band sits in.
Shortly after those alley-oops, CBS switches over to the Kentucky-Eastern Kentucky game, where the Colonels are within five in the final four minutes.
A 15 seed hasn't won a game since 2001, when Hampton beat Iowa State, and it's only happened four times since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, so this is worth a look no matter how unlikely.
I'm trying to ignore that Milwaukee-Alabama game, where the Panthers are maintaining an 11-point lead as the clock ducks under four minutes, because of my prediction that no 12 would beat a 5 this year. I'm already getting e-mails jacking me up for that one.
Kentucky holds off its neighbor for a 72-64 win, a little closer than the Wildcats would have liked, and Pacific gets some TV time with a look-in. Pittsburgh, the 9 seed, had been down to the No. 8 Tigers by 15 at the half, but they've closed to 58-51 with seven minutes to go. Could you have imagined before this season Pittsburgh and Pacific playing in the Tournament and Pacific wearing the white uniforms of the higher seed?
Next page: Brackets are forgotten quickly, but who can forget Coppin State?