West Region - First Round

It's the same in every office. Every year, some chick wins the bracket contest by picking alphabetically, or by famous alumni. Something stupid, that has no basis in which basketball team is actually better.

Well, men can play this game too. I'm breaking down every game of the tournament filling out our bracket by the old standby - "Who'd win in a Fight."

Now that Niagara has gotten off the short bus and onto a regular bus (Side note: The short bus was air conditioned - think the short bus people sat on there and made fun of us regular bus for roasting our asses off?) we can do the Western Region.

1 Kansas Jayhawks vs. 16 Niagara Purple Eagles
No one outside Tallahassee and the waterfall were more concerned about the play-in - opening round - as I was. I had no way that a Jayhawk could defeat a rattlesnake. But the Purple Eagles? That’s a different story.

A regular Eagle would be able to take a Jayhawk, I’m pretty sure.

However the Purple Eagles are like the street toughs who liked armoires on Seinfeld. The difference is the Jayhawks aren’t going to run away, or wear the ribbon. They’re going to fight.

Jayhawks advance.

8 Kentucky Wildcats vs. 9 Villanova Wildcats
I really, really hate Wildcats. The only difference I can tell in this match is that we have some country wildcats and some city wildcats.

Hollywood has been very clear on this. City-fied folk don’t fare too well when they go out into the country. While country folk may not fit in in the big city, they have a way of pushing their way of life on to people and becoming successful.

But Villanova is from Philly - that’s a different type of tough. A Godless, don’t-fear-death-because-anything-is-better-than-this-hell-hole tough.

Had their mascot had any of the traditional signatures of a Philly - droopy eyes, semi-automatic weapons, etc., they’d have had a chance.

Even a city gangster wildcat, but alas their wildcat doesn't even have any bling, and I'm sure he ain't rollin on 22s.

As it is, Kentucky advances.

5 Virginia Tech vs. 12 Illinois Illini
It’s fake tourney Thanksgiving.

The Hokie Bird from Virginia Tech is apparently a turkey-like creature. While Illinois recently deposed their chief - the white kid dressed up as Illiniwek. But we’ll have him in this match up.

Basically it’s tofurkey against tofindian.

The question isn’t do the Illini advance, it’s how do they prepare the feast of the Hokie Bird.

Well, that, and do they carry their case of non-food poisoning into their second round match up against the winner of:

4 Southern Illinois Salukis vs. 13 Holy Cross Crusaders
Now, the Salukis are the team this year that radio hacks everywhere are talking about.

Not the mid-major-ness of the team, but rather “What is a Saluki anyway?”

I guarantee there’s at least 25 people in this country who are now the owners of a radio station shirt because they were able to guess that it’s a dog.

A Saluki doesn’t appear particularly vicious, and since holy warriors in the Crusades managed to kill 1.5 million people I’m going to assume they can take out a floppy-eared dog.

6 Duke Blue Devils vs. 11 Virginia Commonwealth Rams
Duke is obviously Blue because they are sad. Or perhaps it’s just because they’ve been having trouble finding gals to come on to campus in the last year.

If it’s the latter - we’re all in trouble, starting with the male sheep from VCU.

Rather than think any more about this, we’re going to declare Duke the victors on the basis that they must have some sort of super-natural powers of smite.

3 Pittsburgh Panthers vs. 14 Wright State Raiders
In this match up, we refer to Wright State as the Raiders in the loosest terms possible. Considering that their University looked at the nature of a raider and decided that they needed something more gender-neutral.

So it’s the Wright State Whooping Cranes. Oops, I mean the Wright State wolf-like dogs.

A classic dog versus cat match. Near classic anyway.

Wright State’s only chance in this match up would be if they were able to be Wolf-like Raiders. Can you imagine how vicious a mascot they would be if they were dogs who’d go on boats and carried swords whilst pillaging and plundering?

That’d be awesome.

But it’s not to be, since they still go by “Raiders” despite the logo change.

I think that makes them Tofaiders.

Pitt advances to the second round.

7 Indiana Hoosiers vs. 10 Gonzaga Bulldogs
One of the negative side-effects of this bracket is that I’ve actually had to learn something about these mascots. I wasn’t trying to become informed.

So now I know 12 or 13 different potential meanings for Hoosier, most of which are completely stupid and asinine. One of the more widely-distributed theories is that it’s derived from a word often used back in the days as a substitute for “Cracker.” I was unaware of the offensiveness of being called cracker until I got informed.

I thought it was just a color-based thing doing with saltines, but apparently it goes on to imply that people are uneducated and poor.

So as a white dude, I can say that cracker is hostile and offensive, and must be changed.

Gonzaga also calls themselves the “Zags” which is apparently short for “Zig-Zag Rolling Papers” because they like the drugs.

I don’t know how to properly accuse Hoosiers of being pot heads. Just pretend I did, and the Gonzaga rolling papers make them all listless, lazy and stupid.

Or I guess it makes them crackers.

2 University of California- Los Angeles Bruins vs. 15 Weber St. Wildcats
Our third Wildcat of the region!

Honestly, couldn’t the selection committee take items like mascot redundancy into consideration when deciding at large bids and then seeding them?

Fortunately, Weber St. is very accommodating when it comes to my disdain for Wildcats, since they decided in the late 70s it was a good idea to replace their traditional mascot - Waldo the Wildcat with a new mascot all together.

Screw tradition they said, Waldo’s out, Primo Peacock is in.

It lasted an entire year. Well, one year plus one NCAA Tournament.

Bruins over Peacocks - and we’re out of the first round. .