March Madness Reigns Supreme

 Are your brackets busted?

You're not alone. Most of us have suffered through a Lawrence Welk opening round (unless you're a certain age, YouTube the reference!)

Am referring to A One anna Two anna Three used to start the music, only in the case, it denotes the teams knocked out early in the men's NCAA tournament.

One-seeds Purdue and Kansas are done -- Purdue knocked off by a 16-seed and Kansas by #8 Arkansas in round two. Two-seeds Arizona (beaten by #15 Princeton in the opening round) and Marquette (bounced by #7 Michigan State yesterday). Tough to count out Coach Tom Izzo, who has taken Michigan State teams to the tournament 25 straight years.

It truly is a year in which anything can happen.

Just when you think you've seen, along comes the D-5 championship game in the WIAA girls' state basketball tournament.

Chippewa Falls McDonell Catholic Central beat Blair-Taylor 61-46. McDonell was 23 of 28 from the free throw line. Blair-Taylor NEVER went to the free throw line. That's just amazing!

In the boys' state tournament, hats off to DePere, winning the D-1 title for the school's first championship in 89 years! Their 30 wins the most for an unbeaten champion (and the most for a team overall) since Appleton Xavier went 28-0 on the way to the D-3 title in 2017.

Am thinking that the WIAA competition committee needs to take a long, hard look at how the parochial/private schools are divided up come tournament time. Schools like Chippewa Falls McDonell Catholic Central and Wausau Newman Catholic, the teams the squared off in the D-5 title game, have a distinct advantage over the majority of small, rural state high schools.

Same could be said for Kenosha St. Joseph and Onalaska Luther, the teams in D-4.

Perhaps bumping them up a division, regardless of enrollment, is the way to go. And don't even get me started on the topic of public money supporting these schools.

Have to laugh at tournament time of year. It made my Grandma so mad. Not that she had a bundle of cash bet on a team, but that the local ABC and CBS stations carried the games -- and NOT her "stories" as she called the soap operas so common in the 1960s.

Kids, these were the days of few channels, no cable and no VCR or recording capability. And stations couldn't run their regular programs at 1 or 2 in the morning because stations signed off at midnight.

Many of you know just what I'm talking about. Still, fond memories all in all.