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Friday, March 21, 2003

One quiet influence sports has in society is its parlance. Sports enriches - or is it corrupts? -- the language with new words and word forms.

Because of sports, terms like deke and juke are household words. We turn nouns like palm and hoop into verbs, and verbs like serve and carry into nouns. We determine that love means nothing and driving men in means everything. We have bubble teams and airballs, pole positions and home-and-homes.

One of the best sports terms not in the dictionary is popular this week: bracketology.

Bracketology can be loosely defined as the study of and overconfidence in filling out the NCAA basketball tournament brackets. The more teams you have alive as the Final Four approaches, the better a bracketologist you are.

All you need to become a bracketologist is a copy of the 64-team draw, although a few bucks and access to an office pool makes it more interesting. You don't really need any degree of knowledge about college basketball. A brother-in-law or an uncle who follows the sport can help with your predictions, or you can go by seedings, or rooting interest, or even the schools that have interesting names.

And don't forget the founding philosophy behind bracketology: When in doubt, pick Duke.

Beyond guessing who will beat whom and which team will be left standing April 7, advanced bracketology includes analyzing who got into the tournament and who got seeded where.

There are always some interesting names in the field.

Whatever an IUPUI is, it's going to get the vowels knocked out of it tomorrow when it plays Kentucky.

A couple of slots down in the Midwest Region is Weber State, a school in Utah. Now is that pronounced like the grill or with a long "e" as in Webers wobble but they don't fall down? And how about the team from Nebraska, Creighton? Does it follow the exception to the i-before-e rule?

Gonzaga is getting to be a regular in the tournament and has an interesting name, but not a big enough name to stay home in Spokane, Wash., site of some South Regional early-round games. As a ninth seed in the West, it had to travel to Salt Lake City to beat No. 8 seed Cincinnati yesterday.

Other teams in the tournament have interesting stories.

I'm picking Oklahoma State, 21-9 and a sixth seed in the East, to win a tournament game for the first time since two players and six others related to the team died in a plane crash a little over two years ago. In fact, I have the Cowboys losing to intrastate and Big 12 rival Oklahoma in the Elite Eight after knocking off No. 2 seed Wake Forest.

Holy Cross is led by former Pitt Coach Ralph Willard, who recruited some of the Panthers' top players. But the Crusaders are now 0-3 in the tournament under Willard after falling to No. 3 seed Marquette yesterday and haven't won a tournament game in 50 years.

Sam Houston State, 23-6 and the 15th seed in the South, will have a brief stay on its first foray into the tournament. It plays No. 2 seed Florida today. That will put an end to what surely has been a welcome diversion for many of its fans who don't have a lot else going on in their lives.

Sam Houston State is in Huntsville, Texas, the execution capital of the United States. Huntsville has five prisons and a population of 36,000 - give or take a few depending on how hot the electric chair is on any particular day. "We like to call Huntsville Texas' largest gated community," Coach Bob Marlin is fond of saying.

Locally, of course, the buzz is about Pitt, the No. 2 seed in the Midwest. The Panthers open tournament play tonight against a layup named Wagner.

There was some discontent, some talk of a lack of respect, because Pitt not only didn't get a top seed after going 26-4 and winning the Big East tournament but also got what Coach Ben Howland deciphered as the lowest of the No. 2 seeds seeing as how the Panthers are in the same region as Kentucky, probably the top No. 1 seed.

Pitt is partly a victim of an apparent bias against the Big East, which sent only four league teams to the tournament. For the most part, though, the Panthers can blame their candy non-conference schedule when they run into Kentucky in the Elite Eight and lose to the eventual champion Wildcats.

The NCAA selection committee uses the RPI, or Ratings Percentage Index, to help determine seedings, and Pitt's strength of schedule was putrid. If the Panthers want to play Robert Morris, St. Francis, Duquesne and Penn State every year for local flavor, OK, but they need to balance that with more than just Georgia, Ohio State and Rhode Island if they crave respect at the end of the season. Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Norfolk State, Southeast Louisiana and George Mason weren't worth the W's they provided.

Look for Kentucky to go on and beat Florida in the title game after taking care of Pitt in the Elite Eight and Arizona in the Final Four.