No one has to convince Michael Lanza of the “madness” portion of March Madness when the main draw of the NCAA Tournament tips off a few minutes past noon today.
“Oh, it’s crazy,” said the manager of Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant on Market Street. “And it gets a little crazier every year.”
To deal with such craziness packing his establishment to catch each of today’s 16 games on the restaurant’s 61 high definition televisions, Lanza has more than doubled his lunchtime and afternoon servers from “four or five” to “10 or 11.” He expects to add at least three or four more to his usual nighttime crew.
And with top-seeded, unbeaten Kentucky not expected to begin its game with Hampton until close to 10 p.m., Lanza said BWW will extend its usual midnight closing hour, “Until after the game ends.”
Nor is Wild Wings the only downtown bar and restaurant expecting a major crowd.
“Thursday night’s also our ‘Pint Night,'” said Taco Mac manager Charles Hendricks, whose business has 63 televisions for patrons to watch. “So it was already going to be a busy night. But with the NCAA Tournament starting, we’ll have a steady flow of people all day long.”
An Ohio State fan, Hendricks hopes his No. 10 seed Buckeyes can surprise No. 7 seed Virginia Commonwealth this afternoon in Portland, Ore., in the West Regional. He doesn’t expect to have a lot of fellow Buckeye fans among the capacity crowd of 250 he expects to fill his restaurant the next four days, however.
“I’d say we’ll see a lot more Georgia fans, along with North Carolina and Duke.”
Georgia fans can relax for today, of course. They don’t take the court for their East Regional opener against Michigan State in Charlotte, N.C., until 40 minutes past noon on Friday.
But whenever your team plays, it all adds up to the closest thing America has to an unofficial holiday weekend. Or as Lanza noted, “We’ll start seeing businessmen in suits come in just before lunch. Some of them will stay the rest of the day, then come back the next day (Friday).”
The endless office pools the tournament sparks are certainly a part of it. It’s estimated that at least 40 million Americans will fill out as many as 70 million brackets in hopes of winning everything from bragging rights to big bucks.
And should Kentucky finally lose this season, 57.5 percent of the brackets already filled out at CBSSports.com by Wednesday afternoon won’t have the winner, since that’s the percentage picking Big Blue to win its ninth title, second-best in NCAA history behind UCLA’s 11.
The team most often picked at CBS’s website to meet the Wildcats in the final inside Indianapolis’s Lucas Oil Stadium on Monday night, April 6: Duke, which was garnering 28.3 percent of the votes.
Of course, this next stat might give one pause to pick UK which was the overall No. 1 seed. Only three times since the NCAA selection committee began ranking its No. 1s in 2004 has that overall No. 1 cut down the nets: Florida in 2007 (when it repeated as champ), Kentucky in 2012 and Louisville in 2013. Last season’s overall No. 1 – Florida – lost in the Final Four semi to eventual national champ UConn.
Nor is the Wildcats’ path to return to the Final Four for the fourth time in five years necessarily an easy one. Potential Sweet 16 foe Maryland can somewhat equal UK’s size – Big Blue is supposedly the second tallest team in the country behind the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers – and may have the best one-two perimeter scoring punch in the field in freshman guard Melo Trimble (16.3 ppg) and senior wing Dez Wells (15.4 ppg).
Let the Wildcats survive that one – assuming they get past Hampton and the Cincinnati-Purdue winner in the round of 32 – and they could well face either Notre Dame, Texas or West Virginia in the Midwest Regional final.
Anyone who saw the Fighting Irish go on a 24-2 run down the stretch of its ACC Tournament title game victory over North Carolina knows ND can ball with the best of them. Every Kentucky fan already winces over the zone that West Virginia coach Bob Huggins used to neuter the John Wall/DeMarcus Cousins Cats in the 2010 East Regional final.
As for Texas, despite the Longhorns’ lethargic No. 11 seed, they were ranked in the Associated Press top 10 as late as Dec. 28, are the only team in the country to average more blocked shots than Kentucky and lost by only 12 points at UK in early December when point guard Isaiah Taylor was still out with an injury. Throw in the fact that six of the ‘Horns’ 13 losses have come by five or fewer points and Texas looks like the best No. 10 seed or worse to make a deep run.
But for restaurants such as Taco Mac and Buffalo Wild Wings, the fan power of UK Blue is tough to ignore.
“You can’t go anywhere in the country and not see UK fans,” Lanza said. “Three years ago, when they won it all, there was a UK fan in here who went outside and pulled a Kentucky flag we had hanging on the side of the building, brought it in and started waving it around all over the restaurant. Those fans are really crazy.”
And whether UK becomes the first team to go 40-0 or just another overall No. 1 that came up short, this tournament figures to be crazy from start to finish.
Or as Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy said after watching his Rebels rebound from a 17-point halftime deficit to topple Brigham Young 94-90 in Tuesday’s “First Four” play-in game, a game that just might be remembered as this 2015 tourney’s best contest: “Welcome to March Madness.”
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com