{"id":5158,"date":"2014-03-31T01:56:33","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T01:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5158"},"modified":"2014-03-31T01:56:33","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T01:56:33","slug":"mens-basketball-champ-will-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5158","title":{"rendered":"Men's basketball champ will be …"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

OK, sports fans, here is my call for the much-anticipated NCAA men’s basketball tournament.<\/p>\n

The Final Four has been set. I have had next to zero interest in this March Madness malarkey. I say “next to zero” only because one team from my home state of Oregon was in the tournament at the beginning.<\/p>\n

The Oregon Ducks beat BYU in the first round, then lost to Wisconsin in the second round. Wisconsin? Oh, yeah, the Badgers are one of the Final Four teams.<\/p>\n

Back to that in a moment.<\/p>\n

The other three are Connecticut, Florida and Kentucky.<\/p>\n

I do not follow college basketball the way I follow college football. Don’t misunderstand, I’m no expert on either sport. I played a little high school freshman football a hundred or so years ago, but I cannot pretend to know much about the nuances of the game.<\/p>\n

But I do follow the Ducks, the Oregon State Beavers and on rare occasions I like to watch the University of Washington Huskies.<\/p>\n

Who’ll win the NCAA men’s basketball championship?<\/p>\n

My unscientific, unknowing and uneducated pick will be Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Why? Because I want the Ducks of the University of Oregon to have some meager bragging right to having lost their tournament bid to the eventual national champions.<\/p>\n

I have an extended family connection to Wisconsin as well. My wife’s Aunt Margaret lives in Kenosha, as does my wife’s cousin Tom; another of my wife’s cousins, Joanne, lives in Milwaukee.<\/p>\n

OK, there you have it.<\/p>\n

I will retain my virtual non-interest in the tournament, except for “rooting” — if you want to call it that — for the Oregon Ducks to look back and say, “Hey, we lost to the best team in the country.”<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, sports fans, here is my call for the much-anticipated NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The Final Four has been set. I have had next to zero interest in this March Madness malarkey. I say “next to zero” only because one team from my home state of Oregon was in the tournament at the beginning. The … Continue reading Men's basketball champ will be …<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1125,1750,2662,2999,3241,5281],"class_list":["post-5158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-connecticut","tag-florida","tag-kentucky","tag-mens-college-basketball","tag-ncaa-final-four","tag-wisconsin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}