What Madness!

I said earlier in the week that the Madness had officially started thanks to Illinois State and Northern Iowa. And while I'm not taking that back, all I have to say about last night's Syracuse-UCONN game is wow.

I turned ESPN on about 10 minutes before the scheduled start of the Washington State-UCLA matchup, fully intending to switch over to FSN at 8:30. The Orange and the Huskies were battling back and forth and had the game gone to OT any other way, I would have been watching the Bruins race out to a 23-5 lead and missed one of the historic games of all time.

Fortunately, Eric Devendorf had different ideas.

As you had better have seen by now (and if you haven't, I'm sorry), Connecticut tied the game up with just 1.1 seconds left. The Orange inbounded the ball three quarters down the court, which was tipped by a UCONN player right to Devendorf. He quickly gathered himself and, virtually simultaneously with the clock, drilled a 3-pointer to give the game to the Orange...or so he and the rest of the 'Cuse bench thought.

Initially ruled good, the stripes reviewed the shot and came to the conclusion that the ball was still in his hands when the clock struck 0.0. Jay Bilas would say later that had Devendorf cut his fingernails that morning, the shot would have counted. Normally, I would roll my eyes at his hyperbole. This time, I thought it was a definite possibility. Yes, it was that close.

So at that moment, I was hooked. Six overtimes later, only the last of which the 'Cuse had a lead (which they never relinquished), I had not just witnessed one of the most epic games of all time, but also had time to flip over to FSN and catch the last 50 seconds of the Coug-Bruin game.

And that game could have been a barnburner in itself, which it wasn't, as the Cougs Dance shoes were tossed to the back of the closet, not to be worn this March, but I wasn't flipping the channel after the regulation review.

Syracuse and Connecticut have officially set the bar for the 64 games to be played, beginning Tuesday.

Let March Madness continue.