TRIVIA TODAY - Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Greetings Infomaniacs,

Well, folks, it looks like the NCAA's March Madness is upon us. There are 68 collegiate teams that will play in the tournament and people are busy filling out their brackets. I used to fill out a bracket when I worked at my old job, though I must admit I didn't really know what I was doing.

I guess I'm not alone. According to USA Today, the odds of picking a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion! Those are some pretty slim odds! It was all just in good fun, anyway. In any case, here are some fun March Madness facts for you...

Enjoy!
Melissa

Questions? Comments? Email Melissa

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WHO SAID IT?
QUOTE: "When it's played the way is spozed to be played, basketball happens in the air; flying, floating, elevated above the floor, levitating the way oppressed peoples of this earth imagine themselves in their dreams."

HINT: (1941-), is an American writer, professor at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.


RANDOM TIDBITS
Only eight teams competed in the first NCAA tournament. Oregon, nicknamed the "Tall Firs" due to the height of its starting frontcourt, beat out seven other teams to win the first NCAA men's basketball championship in 1939. The field began growing soon after, reaching 16 teams from 1951 to 1952 and varying between 22 and 25 teams from 1953 to 1974. It then steadily increased from 32 teams in 1975 to 64 teams in 1985. The most recent expansion came in 2011, when 68 teams were invited to participate.

The NCAA tournament used to take a backseat to the NIT. The National Invitation Tournament, or NIT, which predates the NCAA tournament by a year, was once considered the preeminent college basketball event. It was especially attractive to teams that wanted the media attention of playing at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The 1966 tournament struck a blow to racial exclusion. African-Americans played a prominent role on some early NCAA championship teams, including future Hall of Famer Bill Russell, who led San Francisco to back-to-back titles in 1955 and 1956. Nonetheless, many schools refused to integrate until after Texas Western (now UTEP) became the first team with an all-black starting lineup to win the tournament in 1966.

A point-shaving scandal disgraced one NCAA champion. In 1950 the City College of New York became the only school ever to win the NIT and the NCAA tournament in the same year. The following season, however, several of its players were arrested for taking bribes from gamblers to shave points. This scandal eventually spread to more than 30 players at seven colleges, four of them in New York City. College hoops in the Big Apple has never been the same since.

The single-game tournament record for most points has stood for over 40 years. In 1970 Notre Dame shooting guard Austin Carr scored a tournament-record 61 points in a first-round win over Ohio. He followed that up with 52 points in a loss against Kentucky, good enough for fourth all-time. Since then, the closest anyone has come to breaking his mark is when Navy's David Robinson notched 50 points in his final collegiate game in 1987.

No. 1 seeds are a good bet to make the Final Four. Since the NCAA began seeding teams in 1979, at least one No. 1 seed has made the Final Four every year except for 1980, 2006 and 2011. But all four No. 1 seeds have only advanced once, when Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina and UCLA pulled off the feat in 2008.

(www.history.com)


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Each time you take a step you make one of me, but then you leave me behind. What am I?

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WHO SAID IT?
QUOTE: "When it's played the way is spozed to be played, basketball happens in the air; flying, floating, elevated above the floor, levitating the way oppressed peoples of this earth imagine themselves in their dreams."

ANSWER: John Edgar Wideman.

***
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