Hoops Hoopla

March Madness, baby.

Good ol' Stanford Cardinal struggled at the beginning of the year, picked it up big time to get wins against both Arizona and Washington in a bitter Pac-10 battle for the top, and now have played themselves into an 6 seed in the Austin regional in the NCAA men's basketball tourney. Seeing that the No. 1 ranked Stanford women's team only gets a 2 seed in the women's tourney, the men should consider themselves lucky. I've seen few games this year, due to the lack of SoCal coverage of NoCal schools (of course), but March is when I really get into the mood for some insane college basketball action.

The team itself really let me down early in the season when they entered conference play 3 games in at 0-3. A paltry 6-7 overall record with losses to Santa Clara and Washington St. really didn't look promising until Chris Hernandez and crew buckled down and manhandled the Arizona Wildcats. From them on, I read many a story of playing with heart, playing with determination, and playing team basketball in the Stanford tradition. It's heartbreaking for me to see them seeded in their regional with a possible second round match up with the top-seeded Duke Blue Devils, but I've seen them perform miracles against this team in the past. No basketball memory is brighter for me than the Casey Jacobsen off-the-glass game-winner of nearly five years ago and being in the sixth-man club for a year was one of my favorite college memories in itself.

Will they be strong enough to make it past a second-round curse that's plagued them since their Final Four appearance in 1998? Will they return to the greatness they possessed with a 30-2 season last year? I hope so.