By Myra Bean
Sometime one has to have a reason to get caught up in all the hoopla (no pun intended) surrounding March Madness.
For some, no reason is needed except the love of college basketball.
To some it helps to know some players or for the teams to be local or something like that.
On my end, I use a little broader spectrum than just a local team (meaning Mississippi team). I go with the SEC. This year the pot got a little sweeter with Memphis.
Now, the University of Memphis is farther away than Ole Miss but a whole lot closer to us than Mississippi State and Southern so they feel like a home team. Especially since the news coverage here is from the Memphis area stations.
So it’s like we’re going to the Sweet 16 with the Memphis Tigers. The Tigers are hot and playing great basketball.
The Tigers will meet the sleeper team of the conference Thursday in Bradley.
In each of the four division, the teams are ranked or seeded 1 through 16.
Memphis is No. 1 and has defeated No. 16 Oral Roberts and No. 9 Bucknell.
Bradley is seeded No. 13 and has defeated No. 4 Kansas and No. 5 Pittsburgh. Bradley is moving up the ladder.
The Memphis/Bradley game can be seen Thursday night at 6:27 p.m. CST on CBS. The game will be played in Oakland, Calif.
Left in the SEC is
– No. 4 LSU who will take on No. 1 Duke Thursday night at 7:10 p.m. EST in Atlanta, Ga., and
– No. 3 Florida and No. 7 Georgetown will play Friday, following the No. 1 Villanova / No. 4 Boston College game in Minneapolis, Minn. which begins at 6:10 p.m. CST.
Other games include:
– No. 2 Texas and No. 6 West Virginia in Atlanta Thursday, following Duke and LSU;
– No. 2 UCLA and No. 3 Gonzaga on Saturday, in Oakland, following the Memphis game;
– No. 7 Wichita St. and No. 11 George Mason Friday at 7:27 p.m. EST;
– No. 1 Connecticut and No. 5 Washington on Friday in Washington, D.C. following Wichita St. and George Mason.
The Lady Rebels are keeping basketball alive for the Ole Miss crowd with their win Sunday over Kansas. They will play again Wednesday.
If this doesn’t interest you, there’s some outdoors diamond action when the rain lets up. |