March Madness vs. the orange bubble

I was reminded of this when I went back home for spring break. I went from the hustle and bustle of Princeton’s campus to the calm and quiet of suburbia. My parents and siblings continued with their normal lives, school and activities while I had the freedom to get up and do whatever I wanted all day. I had become used to the lifestyle of a college student while my siblings were still stuck in high school mode and my parents in “having teenagers as children” mode. Our lives intersected when I came home for spring break, but I quickly realized that the members of my family were firmly in their own worlds. However, an unusual event took place this past week that put my family members’ worlds, along with the worlds of thousands of college basketball fans, on the same wavelength.

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament, known to most people by its most common moniker March Madness, started last Sunday with the announcement of the bracket for the tournament. As bracket-mania quickly overtook the problems in Japan as the hottest news story, I found myself reluctantly persuaded to fill out my own bracket and promised to watch some of the opening second round games with my dad and brother, the college basketball fanatics of the family.

In the days before the tournament, I was quite surprised by the level of fervor that was sweeping the country. My non-fanatic friends and family members who probably hadn’t watched a single basketball game this season were suddenly texting me to ask about my picks for the tournament and to see if I wanted to join their betting pools. Articles on the best way to fill out a bracket were showing up on the front pages of major newspapers. Throughout the whole week our neighborhood sports grill contained an explosion of NCAA college basketball merchandise. It was commonplace to have complete strangers wearing the same team logo walk up to each other and have in-depth conversations about their team’s chances in the tournament. Even President Obama got in on the hype by spending 20 minutes on ESPN explaining his bracket picks with a surprisingly knowledgeable tone. In a strange way, March Madness had become some type of unifying force that had infiltrated everyone’s respective worlds. As much as I was aware of that realization, as I sat down to watch the Thursday afternoon games, I was unaware that my personal Princeton Orange Bubble was about to collide with the worlds of everyone else watching.

As a fan of the Princeton men’s basketball team, I was aware that it had made it into the tournament with an exciting win against Harvard. However, when the schedule was announced on Sunday and I saw Princeton (a No. 13-seed) was playing Kentucky (a No. 4-seed), not even my Princeton spirit could persuade me to predict an upset win for the Tigers. Like all the sports commentators and most of the basketball fans, I assumed the Princeton-Kentucky game would be a minor affair and that Kentucky would smash the Tigers.

However, that Thursday afternoon, I was proven completely wrong. In a thrilling spectacle that showed exactly why so many people love college basketball, Kentucky and Princeton battled it out in a close game that had many fans suddenly thinking that maybe Princeton would be the “upset that could” and one of the Cinderella stories of the tournament. Suddenly, my Orange Bubble world had aligned with thousands of fans watching the game across the country as we uniformly screamed and cheered for the underdog Princeton to win. Though the Tigers ended up losing by a measly two points in the last few seconds, it was still a great game and our basketball team should be proud of its great performance.

That Thursday afternoon, my own private world aligned with those of thousands of other basketball fans in a completely unexpected way. Before then, I had trouble understanding the unifying power of March Madness, but now it’s pretty easy to comprehend.

Kelsey Zimmerman is a sophomore from Glen Allen, Va. She can be reached at kzimmerm@princeton.edu.