By Tom Daniels

It’s time for the NCAA basketball tournament. This championship decides the national collegiate champion. The NIT decides the best basketball team that wasn’t in the top 65. The tournament starts with 65 teams and after one game you get to 64 and begin geometric regression. There are four sets of 16 teams called regions. The geographic names of these regions have nothing to do with where these teams come from. Connecticut is seeded in the West. Even if you can see Russia from your porch, you can end up in the Southern region.

The tournament begins with the #1 team in a region playing the #16 team. The seeding is done by the NCAA seeding committee. In case you are thinking Cinderella, Rocky, or the ’69 Mets, no #16 team makes the Final Four. You must remember each region’s teams are ranked 1 to 16. Obviously there are not four #5 teams in the nation. When you get to that level you are actually looking at the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th best teams. Most upsets happen at the fourth seed and some teams that are ranked below other teams may actually be betting favorites.

Betting of course is against the law. Just like unprescribed growth hormones, dope and driving while impaired, sports knows no bounds. Office pools however are quasi-legal and often Quasimodo. The pool director makes out sheets with all the regions and you begin to check the brackets. Time to make selections. Do not be intimidated, chances are 97 percent of the people in your pool cannot name a current college basketball player. Stay away from initials VCU, UCLA, LSU, ETSU, USC and BYU.

Do not pick teams on the basis of their football records. North Carolina, Louisville, Connecticut and Pittsburgh will not be in the football national championship picture. Xavier, Stephen Austin and Robert Morris are nice names but not national champions. Go with a dog name like Duke or Gonzaga. Cornell could beat Missouri, if they were in the brain bowl. Cleveland State and Radford are probably colleges you never heard of. Go with the chalks, that’s favorites in regular language. For novices stay with #1 and #2 seeds to have a shot. Let the know-it-alls pick the long shots and prove just how much they don’t know. Good luck. It will all be over April 4.