It’s that glorious time of year again, my friends: NCAA March Madness. And day 1 winds down in truly stunning fashion.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Most of it has been fairly predictable (as a matter of fact, I am currently sitting at 100% in my pool-less bracket. awesome.) But HOLY SHIT, that Duke game nearly gave me a heart attack. Yes, I am a Blue Devil fan. Some of you may be disgusted. Yes, it’s just like being a Yankee fan, it’s easy to be a fan of a team that wins all the time, etc, etc. But I am ashamed neither of my Duke nor Yankee affiliation, so any haters can go cry about all the years they’ve gone without a championship. (Sorry…the venom that gets spit at me just has to come back out sometimes…)

Anyway, the fact is that the Blue Devils really DON’T win all the time, as has been evidenced in our past 3 tournament appearances. And tonight was, for a good deal of the game, all too reminiscent of last year, when Duke bowed out in the FIRST ROUND to VCU. Now, the Belmont team is NOTHING like VCU. No full court press, much scrawnier athletic black men (what few of them there were). But still, the scoreboard towards the end really had the adrenaline going. (I think I scared one of my roommates with all the cursing and screaming I did. oh dear.)

I found myself pacing the living room during timeouts, talking to myself, my roommates, anything that would listen, “Again? AGAIN?!?! No. No. This is not going to happen. NO WAY are we going to lose,” all the time very very cognisant of the fact that, yes, there is a fair chance that Duke COULD actually lose. TO AN UNATHLETIC, UNCOORDINATED, PRINCETON DERIVATIVE?! Jeez.

But then dear, dear Gerald Henderson (sigh) went coast to coast for the game winning basket, with that beautiful pacing and hesitation at the top of the key. Magical. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the nail biting and cursing didn’t stop until the clock showed 0.0, but that shot reminded me that YES, Duke actually IS a good basketball team. Whew.

Other observations:

-Marquette really better get their shit together if they’re gonna beat Stanford as I have picked them to. Dominic James is a baller and needs to start playing more like it.

-Male co-workers really don’t know what to do with a girl who’s actually interested in random tournament games. Really. It’s awkward.

-Yes, 100%. That’s RIGHT I picked Kansas St. A guy named Beasley beats a guy named Mayo any day. Come on.

-Does Bob Knight think he’s better than the suit jacket and tie? Yes, apparently he does.