Connor Doyle

It's that time of the year again. Time for me to write a column about how crazy, zany and wacky-wild this year's tournament is. Unfortunately, I don't quite have enough space to cover it all, as a quick look over this year's field reveals more subplots than there are mullets in Albuquerque.

In the West Region alone, you have the No. 1 seed ousted by the sixth-place team in the Pacific 10 Conference, quite possibly the greatest No. 12 seed ever and a team unranked at the beginning of the year making a run at the Final Four.

Yep, that's why they call it "March Madness."

UCLA's run to the Sweet 16 is just the latest chapter in the Steve Lavin saga. Once again, his Bruins came into the season with what many considered the best recruiting class in the nation and with predictions of a conference title. Instead, they lost to Bowling Green in the Maui Invitational, Pepperdine in the early season and limped to a sixth-place finish in the Pac-10 and a first-round exit in the conference tournament. The annual cries for Lavin's slick-coiffed head started sounding in Westwood.

Then all his team does is beat the No. 1 seed in the West - Cincinnati - in the tournament to earn a berth in the Sweet 16. In double overtime. And, once again, Lavin haters in L.A. are faced with the fact that there's no way you can fire a coach that has just taken his team to the Sweet 16. So, this means everyone will have to endure at least another season of cries about what a terrible coach he is.

Fabulous.

Then you have the Missouri Tigers, a team that many (myself included) picked to be in the Final Four before the season started. And we all looked smart for a while, as the Tigers rode an 11-0 record at the beginning of the season to a No. 2 ranking in the country. Then, bad things started happening, most of them losses. Mizzou fell from grace rather quickly and finished with a 9-7 conference record and early exit from the Big 12 Tournament. All of this earned them a No. 12 seed and a matchup against No. 5 Miami in the first round of the tournament.

Then magic happened - the Tigers not only beat the Hurricanes, but two nights later,k mopped up the floor with Big Ten Champions Ohio State (a No. 3 seed). Now they get to take on those bipolar Bruins in the third round. And head coach Quin Snyder says the team is playing their best ball of the season. Sure, the odds are stacked against them, but the Tigers have already made their bid for redemption after a season that disappointed so many.

The Arizona story is a little better known, so I'll spare all the details. But it's important to remember just how little people thought of the Wildcats before the season started. No one had them ranked in the preseason. And now, they've won the conference they were picked to finish fourth in and made it to the Sweet 16 when they should have been watching from home. Furthermore, Arizona had to play its first two games in a stadium, aptly named "The Pit," that the team had a 2-6 record at coming into the tournament. Add to that the New Mexico fans coming out with the express intent of booing every time anything Wildcat showed its face, and it made Arizona's draw quite possibly the toughest of any team in the tournament.

And it doesn't get any easier for the Wildcats. They now face off against the No. 2 Sooners, who probably should have been the No. 1 seed, with history working against them. The last two times UA and OU met in the tournament, the Sooners gave the Wildcats the boot. Plus, Oklahoma presents one of the toughest match-ups possible for the Wildcats, who aren't very well equipped to handle the Sooners' size up front. But it became unfashionable some time in November to bet against Arizona, so there aren't likely many predicting them to lose now.

And the madness doesn't stop after these games. But this column does.