March Madness

Well, today is the first day of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, which is akin to the Pope visiting town here in Louisville. The city has four "local" teams competing in the tournament: U of L and Kentucky, of course, and also Indiana and Western Kentucky. Now, I understand why the latter two teams are considered local, even though they are both roughly 2 hours from Louisville. It is the same reasoning that makes the University of Illinois and Mizzou local teams in St. Louis. They are only about 2 hours away and plenty of fans and alumni from both teams live in St. Louis. So I can understand that reasoning. What confuses me is why the local papers don't consider Xavier, in Cincinnati and only about 100 miles away, a local team. Same can be said for Butler and, to a point, Purdue. These are all teams that fall within the geographic limits defined by the four teams I mentioned previously. But our local newspaper (and that, my friends, is a whole different post I look forward to writing) lists only those first four teams as our "local" representation.

However, I must admit that if I had to choose where to live this year based on being a college basketball fan, Louisville would be my choice. While Louisville claims 4 local teams in the tournament, St. Louis college basketball has hit an all-time low with ZERO local teams in the tourney. Mizzou blew their shot in the last month of the season, Southern Illinois had a down year after a few years of dominance in the MVC, and Illinois gave their fans an improbable run to the Big 10 final, only to be decimated by Wisconsin to finish the season under .500. So I guess I'm stuck joining the crowd here in Louisville hoping one of our teams can make a run, while all the while secretly cheering on Texas as a Big 12 fan.

I'll have more on this as the tournament goes on, but for now I'm on to some personal local news. My training for our Pennsylvania trip has hit a small snag as I have come down a bit sick. Plus I don't want to do too much overeating this week as I am out of . But I plan to do some big shopping this week and do serious training for that all next week. While I'll keep posting about the trip, for more info on that, check out Steve's blog.