first round.

Several times Thursday night, I almost went to bed before the basketball was over. But I stayed up, though my eyelids grew droopy, because Wake Forest needed me to. They never seemed to be quite able to pull away from Texas. They got ahead for a while, but then the Longhorns rallied and made it a close game again. Though I try to soak up as much March Madness as possible every year, I was sleepy. If it hadn't been an ACC team, one that was in a town where I lived for two years, one that was the hometown team of the man I love, I would have called it a night before halftime.

If you haven't caught on yet, this is my annual post about sports. Even though I feel like there is really nothing left for me to say about the NCAA tournament, I feel compelled to write about it every year. Maybe because it so thoroughly engages me for several weekends in a row. To not write about it would be denying the part of me that truly loves college basketball. So while I usually put off mentioning it for days, even weeks, because I am sure I haven't any words left, I'm going to go ahead and get this out of the way.

There is a special place in my heart for the first weekend of the tournament. It's a weird kind of thing to keep in your heart, and there are many other, more deserving things which occupy greater areas. But there it is, maybe in a little out of the way corner next to a valve, that place where I keep my love for things like very specific parts of sporting events.

I love the first weekend, because of the palpable excitement. There's been mounting anticipation all week, from the conference tournaments the previous weekend, to when they announce the pairings on Sunday, through the three and a half days of speculation and trash talk and bracket-filling, and then FINALLY! It's here! It's noon on Thursday and it's started and everyone is bursting with energy. The players seem like those Spanish bulls that have just been let out of the gate, here they come!

I love the first weekend, because of the underdogs. Next weekend, after two rounds, there will likely still be a couple of low-ranked teams hanging around. Some of them make it through the first round, and some of those fall in the second. By the fourth round, there's usually only one left, and they get called the season's Cinderella. But in this first two days of non-stop basketball, there are many little guys to root for. They seem so happy to be there at all, playing against guys they've been watching on TV all season. You admire their pluck, their courage, their audacity to dare pose a threat to some nationally ranked team. And unless they are taking on your team, you really really want them to win. They seem to deserve it for sheer gumption.

I love the first weekend, because there are just so many games. From noon to midnight, there are games, sixteen in one day. When I tune in (God bless cbssports.com), maybe I've never even heard of one of the teams, but a few minutes later, I am inexplicably pulling for them as if they were my own hometown heroes. I'll tell you a secret: I watched the Villanova/Robert Morris game from my cubicle. It was so exciting: double overtime! I might have been more secretive about it if half the office wasn't blatantly doing the same thing.

And so Thursday night, the very first night of this year's big dance, I made myself stay up, because the first round of the NCAA tournament only happens two days a year. Even as midnight passed and I really wanted to just go upstairs to bed, I stayed next to my laptop. Even as Wake Forest pulled ahead by twelve points, I stayed, and it was again a one point game within a couple of minutes. I thought of my mom, whose devotion to the Atlantic Coast Converence could never be questioned, but who has a hard time making it through any game that extends into the nine o'clock hour. I am only twenty-seven years old, and I don't care if I did give up caffeine this week (again), I am still too young to give up on watching an exciting ball game with a team that I do care about just because I have to go to work in the morning.

And then Ishmael Smith, who I had never heard of before but who got me thinking that Ishmael is really kind of a cool name, made that shot with a couple seconds to go. And I was very awake and screaming. It was all over, they won, and I thought hard about watching the end of the Montana/New Mexico game. But I went up to bed, later than usual, but totally, totally worth it.