March Madness is a time of pain and agony.The NCAA basketball tournament is in my opinion the greatest sporting event ever created, yet I have held a strong love/hate relationship with it. Last year I wrote about the woes and frustrations that come with making picks in a bracket and how frustrating it is to see others who have little to no knowledge of college basketball come in and place higher by making their pics based off jersey color or logo. It was a dark time.

I came in dead last in my pool of 10 people last year. That means that I finished behind all my friends and family. Even those who picked off whose mascot was the “cutest”. I was disgusted with myself.

Coming into this year I decided that I would pick the Villanova Wildcats as my champion, something I’d done for the the past five years. While this was the correct basketball pick to make, and I consider myself an avid follower and fan of Nova basketball, I ran into a moral dilemma. All my life I had been a Texas Longhorn fan in all sports, basketball being the only one where I had a second team that I followed. The Horns were back in the tournament for the first time in about two years and I was ecstatic. At first I had Texas losing in the 2nd round in my bracket, a reasonable thing to do. I was giving my future school a win and felt like a good fan. But then comes along my soon-to-be graduated sister (from the University of Texas by the way) who goes on and picks Texas to win the whole darn thing.

I felt like a fake fan. How could I pick against my future school and lifelong team? But I did. My sister picked UT all the way despite them being a #10 seed and projected to lose in the 1st round. Granted my sister also made some other questionable picks, most notably picking Marshall University to win a few rounds because “they’re logo has the words “The Herd” in it” and she thought that was “really cool”. I shouldn’t have let her picking Texas make me feel so fake but it did.

The tournament goes on and Texas loses in the first round busting my sisters bracket. I felt bad.

She was only being a true fan and was now out of contention after only the first couple hours of the tournament…..or so I thought.

The tournament produced lots of upsets this year (dare I say an abnormal amount) including a #1 seeded Virginia team losing to the unknown #16 seed UMBC which was the first time a one seed lost to a 16 seed in tournament history.

After all the upsets went down over a course of two weeks I was headed into the final four weekend as the only one remaining with their champion as Villanova remained alive. Despite my bracket looking like a dumpster fire I was set up to win my bracket pool and redeem myself. As I go to check the standings before the national championship game I was fully expecting to be in first place with the pool clinched, but to my surprise there was one person ahead of me, my sister.

Somehow the girl who knew nothing about college basketball and picked a team who lost in the first round to win the whole tournament was leading me. It all came down to the National Championship game between Villanova and Michigan as the deciding factor.

It seemed like everything was setting up for a storybook ending for my sister. It was gonna be a true underdog tale.The only person who remained loyal to their school was about to be rewarded for their dedication. It was like something you see in a movie.

Unfortunately for my sister this isn’t Hollywood. Villanova slaughtered Michigan beating them by 17 points and bringing me back to the mountaintop as my bracket pool champion.

I had established myself as the premier picker but still felt bad for not picking Texas. I give more credit to my sister for sticking to her guns and admittedly a small part of me wanted her to win. But the majority of me likes winning too much and celebrated almost obnoxiously. But hey, that’s sports. Go Nova Go.