Tank McNamara by Bill Hinds for March 17, 2024

“Survival of the Fittest” really is more fitting to explain how the players are recruited to their college teams, than it explains the tournament.

Perhaps Diogenes could make an appearance to show Tank “One Shining Moment”?

Time also for “Mad Marchness!”

Boy, March Madness is insane.

Looks like the at-large bid thieves/bubble busters have been busy. Dayton and FAU lose in their conference tourneys, meaning 2 teams which would never had at large consideration are getting in. Additionally NC State and Oregon won their respective tournaments and despite the name recognition, these teams were not at large contenders either, meaning 2 more bubble teams are now relegated to the NIT. So basically, we can look at the top 4 seeds of the NIT and realize that they were teams that could have been in the 11 seed play in games this Tuesday or Wednesday if so many conference tournaments did not go sideways!

And wait until the upsets start happening!

Well, some of the choices seem to be a matter of natural selection. Of course Darwin was working before genetics and from a small data base or he’d have realized that some selections just aren’t natural.

I know Tank isn’t a biology major, but I am: Darwin was far more of an expert on barnacles and earthworms (he wrote books about both) than finches. He had to get John Gould (IIRC) to do the workup on his finch specimens.

That only bugged the Tank McNamara readers who are biology nerds, which is possibly just me, but I feel better for writing it.

And here I don’t care about any basketball!

I hear there’s an award named after him.

There’s a Terrapin, many birds

How do you have an elimination bracket with 68 teams? Shouldn’t there be 64 teams?

Whenever I watch someone doing something stupid that removes them from the gene pool (preferably before they replicate) I just say, “Think of it as evolution in action.”

And how many will have sub .500 winning percentages? And how many 25 – 0 will be snubbed?

I find it hard to believe this is really the ghost of Charles Darwin. I think it evolved from a Darwin-esque species of ghost. :)

Darwin was also good at predicating which players will act like monkeys in front of a camera….