#1628 #tbt: it's time for the Madness

It is one of my favorite times of the year - the NCAA men's basketball tournament, also called March Madness. Starting today, 64 teams start the tournament. If you lose, you go home. Winners advance to the next round. By Sunday, we will be down to the Sweet 16. Those 16 teams will play starting next Thursday and by the end of Easter weekend, we will be down to the Final 4. Those 4 teams will play on April and then there will be two teams left and those two teams will play in the championship game on April 4.

I think the first weekend is the most fun because there are so many games all four days and the first weekend is when most of the upsets happen. There is so much emotion and passion and competitiveness. It's awesome!

Part of the fun of March Madness for me is filling out a bracket - trying to figure out who is going to win. So far today my bracket looks good because I picked Yale and Arkansas - Little Rock to win. Both of those teams were number 12 seeds going against number 5 seeds. (Every team in the tourney has a seeding - a ranking. There are four divisions, so each division has 1 through 15 seeds. It makes sense if you look at a bracket. You can look at one here.)

The Utah Runnin' Utes are a 3 seed in the Midwest division. I just watched their game, which they won, thank you very much :) I'm feeling pretty tired, but I want to stay up just a little longer to watch a bit more of the Arizona game and the Seton Hall game.

To bring this all back to Throwback Thursday, in 2013, the first round of the NCAA men's tourney was here in Salt Lake City. I was able to purchase a ticket to sit in my company's suite to watch the games. I remember that it was a whole bunch of basketball and that it was really, really fun to be there. My #tbt photo is of the court:

I learned today that Salt Lake City will be hosting the first round of the tourney again next year. Man, I would really love to watch the games here again!

Happy March Madness! And Happy St. Patrick's Day!