March Madness from the Syracuse Staff

Here is my fool-proof step-by-step method to predicting who will move on to the Elite Eight – coming from a girl who hasn’t been wrong yet in her bracket.* Let’s take a look at this weekend’s Sweet Sixteen games. Playing in the South: #1 Kentucky vs. #4 Indiana and #3 Baylor vs. #10 Xavier. Playing in the East: #1 Syracuse vs. #4 Wisconsin and #6 Cincinnati vs. #2 Ohio St. Playing in the Midwest: #1 UNC vs. #13 Ohio and #11 NC St. vs. #2 Kansas. Playing in the West: #1 Michigan St. vs. #4 Louisville and #3 Marquette vs. #7 Florida. Based on where each college is located, in almost every game there is a home advantage. In the South division: Kentucky and Baylor should win (since they’re both located in the South). In the East division: Syracuse should win…and, um, even though they are both Ohio schools, we’ll give advantage to Cincinnati because they play for the Big East…? In the Midwest division: Kansas should win and we’ll say Ohio too – because it’s in the Midwest, and there’s got to be one Cinderella team in the Elite Eight (there is every year!). In the West division: Errr…shit, this method isn’t working… Okay, so far we have in the Elite Eight: South: Kentucky vs. Baylor East: Syracuse vs. Cincinnati (…wait, we don’t want that. We lost to them in the Big East Tournament…dammit.) Midwest: Kansas vs. Ohio West: …balls. Let’s try to figure out the West division. #1 Michigan St. vs. #4 Louisville and #3 Marquette vs. #7 Florida. I guess we'll go with Michigan St. and Marquette because they are closer to the west coast? Yeah, that sounds legit. Elite Eight Final Predictions: South: #1 Kentucky vs. #3 Baylor East: #1 Syracuse vs. #6 Cincinnati Midwest: #1 Kansas vs. #13 Ohio West: # 1 Michigan St. vs. # 3 Marquette Crossing my fingers for a Syracuse vs. Marquette Championship game (because we kicked their butts last time we played)!

I can't wait to see Jeremy Lin wreck everyone on the courts, it's gonna be linsane. And now that Lin-ter is over, the weather's really nice too. What do you mean he's not lin March Madness? That's not linteresting at all! I spent lin-terally $200 on all this Jeremy Lin gear to root for him at the Carrier Dome! I guess I'll just have to watch clips on the Lin-ternet.

For the past two weeks the SU Basketball team has criss-crossed the country. With games all over the place it has led them from Syracuse to New York City to Pittsburgh and now Boston. It’s a given that all of the players and coaches are traveling, but they are by no means the only ones. Hardcore fans, writers from the Daily Orange and cheerleaders have also been with the team at every pit stop they have made. One person who relishes this opportunity to travel throughout the country is Otto. Although he takes up two seats (which he has to pay for) the traveling gives him the chance to find an attractive single orange he can mate with. Since Otto’s birth in 1980 he has been on a mission looking for that special someone he can grow old with. This is not to say Otto has not found a couple of one-night stands throughout the years ranging from New Orleans in 1987 and 2003. Just recently Otto thought he found love in Miami but the feeling wasn’t mutual as he had his little orange heart broken. It’s hard to imagine Otto having such a hard time finding love considering he is the most beloved orange in the world. But it’s true, as there are some things about Otto that female oranges don’t find attractive. For one, Otto lives in Syracuse, which is not the most desirable location for an orange to live. Also, Otto is constantly on the road making it hard for him to settle down. When I asked Otto what he was looking for in an orange he just twirled his head and did a cartwheel. Otto is hoping to get a tournament game in Brazil where there are over 18 million oranges. I don’t want to be the one to tell Otto that there is no way that will happen. Just remember Otto; you are beautiful no matter what they say.

Most of the fun of March Madness comes from bracket-making. People enter their brackets into competitions with friends hoping that theirs will come out on top. SU students take this past time very seriously. They research for hours on ESPN just to have that perfect bracket. Students at schools that suck at basketball, on the other hand, have a slightly different approach to bracket making. They just follow just 3 simple rules… Rule #1: Which team has the cutest colors? No one wants to have to look at some nasty ass colors for the entire month. A team like Georgetown isn’t going to make it far in a bracket with their players wearing gruesome gray and boring blue! DIII-ers realize this and choose more aesthetically pleasing colors. Rule #2: Any stud muffins on or off the court? Similar to rule #1, nobody has the desire to stare at a giant sweaty ogre. Everyone can agree that it’s nice to be able to look at someone attractive once in awhile, whether they be the basketball players, cheerleaders, or band members. Making it past the Sweet Sixteen is so much sweeter when you get to make pretend relationships with the elite DI crews. Rule #3: Do any of your friends go to that school? “Jessica goes to Vanderbilt and she dated Jake 5 months after we broke up, so I’m gonna go with Wisco.” Never root for a school where that bitch who wore the same dress as you to prom or the douche who told you that you need to lose weight goes. Those are just, like, the rules of feminism!...or in this case, rules of NCAA-noobs-attempting-to-make-sense-of-a-month-claimed-by-the-divison-I-superior-teams.