Beauty of NCAA Tournament: ‘Anything can happen’

LOUISVILLE, KY. — This sprawling, eye-catching spectacle looks even more impressive from the inside than from without. That is to say, if you want to make the case that the NCAA Tournament is the greatest event in American sports, you are not going to get an argument from the players.

“Because it’s so unpredictable. Anything can happen,” said Kris Jenkins of Villanova, who contributed to the happenstance factor with a 35-foot three-pointer that helped turn his team’s game against Miami in the Sweet 16. “It’s the best basketball players in college playing against each other. It’s amazing that if you don’t take it one game at a time, you can get beat by anyone. I think that’s pretty much what makes it the best, just how unpredictable it is.”

Kansas star Perry Ellis, whose top-seeded team faced Villanova at the KFC Yum! Center Saturday night for the right to reach the Final Four, said, “I would say I really started watching it around the seventh or eighth grade, not really as a young kid. What struck me was just how crazy it is. Ever since it started, there have been crazy games.”

One thing that both teams knew for certain entering Saturday was that it would be the end of the line for one of them. The utter finality for somebody in every single game over three weeks is possibly the greatest factor in making March Madness a national preoccupation, if not an obsession. “Just being in it, knowing that there’s that one chance. You can’t lose a game, or you’re done,” Ellis said.

That Kansas and Villanova — considered Nos. 1 and 2 in the nation by one statistical survey — can face each other is another large part of the appeal. Madness can flourish in any kind of soil — in the heartland of Big 12 territory, which is solid football country, and on the sidewalks of Northeast cities. “We’re just a basketball league,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “It’s pure basketball, it’s basketball for purists.”

There is no way Middle Tennessee State and Michigan State ever would play a football game that meant anything. In this tournament, they played a basketball game that meant everything, and the smaller school won.

All of which is not to say that the Big Dance is totally pure and wholesome. It has one dicey attribute in common with the Super Bowl, which television ratings indicate is the king of U.S. sports. In each case, people can, ahem, wager on it. When NCAA Tournament followers say “brackets” they mean “gambling.”

Also, the tournament shares a potential pitfall with the former national pastime. Like Major League Baseball, NCAA basketball begins its games very, very late, creating problems for children and for people who have to get early for work. It is probably no accident that Ellis didn’t start taking an interest until he was in junior high. On Saturday, the teams in the game here had hours and hours to kill before a tipoff that was close to 9 p.m.

Kansas guard Wayne Selden Jr. predicted on Friday that his team would follow the same routine that the did before its late game Thursday: “Wake up, eat breakfast. We did shootaround. Then we ate again. And by that time, it was time to play, I think.”

Warts and all, it is a blast for the players. Ellis said even the win-or-go-home tension is endearing. “There’s some pressure, I know that. But I feel like I’ve been in so many situations in the game, I’m really not trying to think about that. I’m just trying to play my game and have fun,” he said the other day.

Villanova guard Josh Hart agreed. When he was asked how his team had shot at nearly 60 percent from the floor entering Saturday night, he had no explanation. “That,” he said, “is the beauty of the tournament.”