My Picks

My bracket will be available for your perusal tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I'm sharing its salient features.

Here are the upsets I'm forecasting:

Round 1: St. Mary's, Pittsburgh, Utah State, UCLA, Creighton, NC State, Iowa

Round 2: Utah State, Villanova, Utah

Round 3: Utah

Round 4: Wake Forest, Connecticut

The biggest risk, of course, is Utah State. Pittsburgh is an "upset" in name only. I have to vote against Bobby Knight, even though UCLA is so up-and-down. Many people are expecting Villanova to get upended early, but I think guard play wins more often than not. Utah has one of the finalists for player of the year and he happens to be a seven footer. That matters.

In the Final Four I have two 2-seeds, Oklahoma State and Wake Forest competing in one game and 1-seed Duke against 2-seed Connecticut in the other.

The final features Oklahoma State against Duke and sees Eddie Sutton finally bringing home the big one.

Bear in mind, as you ponder my bracket, that I detest Duke and have a powerful aversion to the entire Big-12 Conference. But you can't select with your heart in this game unless you don't care about winning.

If I were, I'd have Washington or Gonzaga beating Arizona in one semifinal and Syracuse trouncing Kansas in the other, with Syracuse once again bringing home the title to delight my dad. Normally, I'd prefer Connecticut over Kansas. However I'd dearly love to see that teary-eyed traitor Roy Williams see his alma mater abused by the players he abandoned. I'd also have more upsets, because I love underdogs.

Let the madness commence!

Territorialists

It's always great having my parents come visit. This trip, though, was especially good. By resisting the impulse to make them do things, we all ended up doing a lot of pleasurable not-doing. Still, the disruption to our routine is hard. Not only do Kim and I have to cope with life on the front-room futon, but we also have to confront cats who are none to happy to be displaced, however temporarily, from what they regard as their rightful place. Now that we have three of them, the stress is exponentially greater. Thankfully, our newest family member is now joining her adopted brothers in celebrating the return of access to the bedroom:

Don't they look fetching offset by our new close-out Marimekko sheets from Crate & Barrel? Red always seems to go well with fur. I think you can tell how happy Kim is too. "I peek out over the covers and see all those ears," she reports. "I love that."