General March Madness Thread for 3-19-21

In a non-traditional season, a non-traditional Friday opening round slate features plenty of quality matchups and some potential upsets. Let’s break it down now and then yell about it during.

Best Game: Hokies-Gators. Keve Aluma is the tallest Virginia Tech rotation player, the one that gets the most minutes, and the main offensive catalyst. He’s also a 6-foot-9 center. How he deals with the 6-foot-11 Colin Castelton will be a big factor in his team’s chance to advance.

Don’t sleep on that Aggie-Red Raider game though. Utah State played some weak competition, but they beat San Diego State twice in the regular season.

Best Players: Illinois got their one seed with the play of Kofi Cockburn and Ayo Dosunmu.

Best Name: Drexel’s Matey Juric.

Best Game: Absolutely give me Loyola against Georgia Tech. Tech’s got the ACC Player of the Year in Moses Wright who is OUT FOR THIS WEEKEND. COME ON. Ugh. Tennessee - Oregon State moves ahead as a “Major conference autobid stealer as a 12-seed” threat, but you might knock out some housework during this shift.

Best Players: Tennessee’s got a dynamic duo of freshman in Keon Johnson and Jaden Springer.

Best Name: Oral Roberts.

Best Game: Too much of my identity is wrapped up in the Wisconsin Badgers Men’s Basketball Team to accurately discern if watching them perform is considered “entertainment” or “acceptable” or “a violation of the Geneva Convention” but they’ll be on.

Best Player: Cade Cunningham’s the Big XII POTY. He’ll look to improve his draft stock by slicing through the Flames, and I’m rooting for him to do so.

Best Name: The North Texas Mean Green rely on Javion Hamlet and you should too.

Best Game: We’re in for a good night, as Geo Baker finally gets his March stage after committing to Queen’s College when they were the dregs of the Big 10. Normally I don’t root for most teams that have the same conference patch as the Badgers, but between Baker helping make that squad respectable and his week speaking out against the NCAA, let’s go Knights. He’ll play a game Clemson squad that beat highly-ranked Alabama back in December, and boy does that phrase feel familiar.

But, my attention will also work with the Aztecs - Orange game for a bit. Syracuse will play zone, but San Diego State shoots 37.5% from deep. Look for Jordan Schakel, he of a stellar 75 for 161 3-shooting campaign, to be the focal point here. Finally, Nova’s injury woes mean that an untested Winthrop squad has a chance to be a traditional 12 over 5 to keep your eyes open.

Best Player: Miles McBride of West Virginia’s closest to declaring for the NBA draft, with Nova’s Jermaine Samuels being a 6-foot-7 sniper being a Wisconsin fan’s kinda player.

Best Name: Jake Kocorowski will tell you it’s Mountaineer Derek Culver, but I didn’t think they had locations in Morgantown.

A Better David Bowie Song Than “Let’s Dance”

The Big Dance is a popular nickname for the NCAA tournament. “Let’s Dance” is objectively the worst David Bowie song. Here, I recommend a different song from Bowie’s catalog.

The third single off of 1. Outside, “Hallo Spaceboy” alternates between Bowie’s eccentric lyrics over a haunting melody and a killer driving drum beat. Strongly influenced by Nine Inch Nails to the point Bowie co-headlined their 1995 tour, this track is clearly a misplaced demo from 1997’s Earthling, and absolutely better than anything that starts with four escalating measures of “aaaaaahhhhh” like “Let’s Dance.”