At the end of football season, after the devastating loss in the BCS Championship game, OU’s basketball team had only one loss and was ranked #6. Blake Griffin, the sophomore forward, was leading the team incredibly well and was being included in player-of-the-year discussions. OU dominated the first half of their Big XII schedule, moving as high as #4 and being included in number-one-seed discussions for the tournament. It was very exciting.

And then, in a game against bitter rival Texas, Blake Griffin suffered a concussion. He missed the rest of that game against Texas, and OU lost for just the second time all season. Griffin then missed the next game, which the Sooners lost to Kansas. Even with him back, they suffered; the rhythm of the season had been interrupted. They finished off the regular season with another loss to Missouri and a narrow victory against Oklahoma State, and then they lost their first game in the Big XII tournament. In just three short weeks, the season that had seemed so promising (with a Big XII Championship and a #1 seed in the tournament) came to a grinding halt.

It was still a great season. Blake Griffin won the Naismith Trophy, making OU the first school to have the Naismith and the Heisman Trophy winners in the same academic year. OU got a #2 seed and won three games in the tournament. The Sooners lost to North Carolina (the eventual national champions) in the Elite Eight, finishing 30-6 with a #7 ranking. North Carolina played incredibly well throughout the tournament, steam-rolling all their opponents: the OU game was their closest finish, which they won easily by twelve. Congratulations to coach Roy Williams and the Tar Heels for a great season and their second national championship this decade.

Blake Griffin announced that he’s leaving college early to play in the NBA. It’s hard to blame him, but he will be missed. Next year will probably be a bit of a rebuilding year, but I’m hopeful for great things from Capel and the Sooners in the near future. I now have a few months to get caught up on some of my other activities until football season starts with OU playing BYU here in Dallas in September. Boomer Sooner!

The last two games of the tournament were absolutely thrilling.

1. After Memphis easily beat UCLA in the first of semifinal games on Saturday night, Kansas jumped out to 40-12 (!) lead over North Carolina in the second. Then North Carolina rallied to cut their deficit to only 6 points (!!!) halfway through the second half. Kansas held off the comeback and finished the game with a comfortable lead, moving to the championship game. I know I should have been rooting for Kansas, a fellow Big XII school, but I admit I wanted North Carolina — I am a huge fan of the coach Roy Williams and their long tradition.
2. The championship game on Monday night was one of the best championship games of all-time. The teams traded the lead back and forth, never more than seven points, until Memphis appeared to have the game won when they pulled ahead by nine points with two minutes to go. Against all hope, Kansas hit some big three-point shots — with Memphis missing some important free throws — to tie the game and then easily win it in overtime.

Congratulations to the Kansas Jayhawks.

CBS compiles a montage of clips from throughout the tournament called “One Shining Moment”, which they play every year at the end of the championship game. This montage provides, and I look forward to it every year. (I only missed it once: in 2003, I got so upset that Roy Williams and Kansas lost to Syracuse that I forgot all about it that night.) If you missed it, be sure to check out this year’s montage online.

Last year during March Madness, our son Garrett was born. This year, we celebrated his first birthday with a basketball-themed party on the night of the Final Four. He opened presents and ate his first bite of cake.

I wanted to direct other geeky web developers to something cool I discovered this year while following March Madness. ESPN has created a web-based tournament bracket with HTML and CSS. The design is elegant, the markup is very clean, and it is filled with hypertext goodness. (If you are not a geeky web developer, you can pretend that you never read this.)

The first game, Michigan State against Duke, was an incredible upset, with Michigan State knocking off Duke. The second game, Utah against Kentucky, was not quite as exciting; Kentucky was definitely the better team and they wore Utah down fairly easily. (The two winners played each other in Austin on Sunday afternoon, Michigan State against Kentucky. We wanted to go to this game, but we thought we had better get back to Dallas. We listened to the entire game while we were driving home, an amazing double-overtime upset that Michigan State won to advance to the Final Four in St. Louis next weekend.)

Year after year, I follow the NCAA college basketball tournament. When I was in high school, I used to follow college basketball all season long — I had a lot more free time back then. Now I’m content to catch up with the whole season at the beginning of March (just before the conference tournaments start), and then follow the tournament all the way through with my former intensity.

The tournament is accurately called “March Madness”, and this year the tournament has had more madness than most. There have been some huge upsets, some amazing comebacks, a few double overtime games, and four- and five-seeds in the Final Four. We’re pulling for Michigan State, the underdog, so that we can say we watched the national champion play in the tournament.