Finding Fennis in 2009 Field

Some pictures are worth a thousand words.

This one was worth only a long, drawn-out "hmmm...", the kind of clueless head-cocked sound your dog might make if you asked it for stock advice.

The photo was a jumble of clichés, what might've been a John Wayne daydream re-imagined by Spike Lee and re-touched by Ang Lee. Fennis Dembo, the Wyoming star and scene-stealer of the 1987 NCAA tournament sat on the cover of Sports Illustrated, duded up in a long duster, a lasso awkwardly tossed over one arm, and with dirt covering only the right side of his body, as though he'd just been posted up by Pigpen.

It was a double-take kind of photo even if you were three sheets to the wind, but that SI cover previewing the 1988 college basketball season was a clear a picture of what the always-headed-to-overtime spirit of the NCAA tournament. In the center sat Dembo, the point-maker who still could've dropped 30 if the court was 94 miles long instead of 94 feet, and who had led the Cowboys to the Sweet 16 the previous year, dropping 41 on fourth-seeded UCLA and Reggie Miller.

In the upper corner was an inset about the national champion Hoosiers.

Go ahead, we'll wait while you chew on that metaphor for a while.

Yes, before the last two years when the NCAA tournament became the dominion of the top seeds, the opening two rounds of the tournaments had more plot twists than a Mexican telenovela. And its stars were always bit players turned surprise sensations.

They were Dembo. Or God Shammgod, or Mouse McFadden, Bryce Drew, Harold Arceneaux or Kevin Pittsnogle. They were people you generally only knew for one day only and yet these same stars will never have to pay for their own beer in bar for the rest of their lives. Steph Curry gave it a heckuva whirl last year, but with all due respect to the man who looks young enough to have a pair of underoos in his gym bag, performances like that used to be an exception not a rule.

So heads up 2009, we need a big performance out of you. And we think you're ready.



The first two rounds of the NCAA tournament have always been built for the unlikely heroes and when power teams take that role, like Duke's Gerald Henderson dashing the length of the floor to beat Belmont last year of Maryland's Drew Nicholas hitting a walk-off 3-pointer (literally) against UNC-W in the opening round in 2003, it's because you put yourself in a bad situation (which, incidentally, is the same reason Paris Hilton is famous.)

Opening-round upsets speak to us in a way that sports rarely does. Usually sports are the domain of men who make more in a month than you paid for your house and who could jump higher than you can climb on a ladder.

But the opening two rounds are full of us. It's lots of guys with six pairs of socks on to measure up to the heights they're listed. They're body by beer-pong physiques banging with guys who will have their legs ensured by Lloyd's of London.

As far as athletes go, they're almost regular folks, and aside from watching Bo Weekely rip one down the fairway, Daly rip one in a press conference or Jerome James prove that there is a place in the NBA for men whose scouting reports consist of their preferences a the concession stand, this is as real as it gets.

By the time we get to week two, the NCAA tournament is a sport's fans event. Before then, it's a cultural quilt, and tune that everybody knows the first verse to and only the hardcore fans know the last two, and the week where the number of whacked out upsets you pick is probably relative to the number of cats you tuck in at night.

Nobody really knows what it's like to be LeBron James. Everybody knows a one-day-in the-sun Fennis.

Talking heads will tell you too many mid-majors were excluded and somehow the NCAA tournament is like the BCS by insisting on the integrity of the bracket rather than programming in storylines like it's sweeps week. But don't listen to them.

Dembo will be back in 2009.

Ignore, too, all the praise being heaped on the unsinkable top four seeds. The last time Pittsburgh, Louisville, Connecticut and North Carolina all won in the same week you were week, you probably would've guessed Bernie Madoff was the full name of the dead guy from Weekend at Bernies It was mid-December when they all won in the same poll stanza, let alone two, let alone against NCAA tournament competition.

Firestone hasn't had to deal with as many stories about bad wheels as North Carolina and surely someone in the crowd is going to snap when subjected to one too many toe puns by lazy headline writers. Pittsburgh was humiliated by West Virginia in the Big East tournament and despite a very efficient offense, has played its way into enough scoring droughts to end its season early against Florida State, Oklahoma State or Tennessee in the first three rounds.

Top-seed Louisville was blown out by 33 by an NIT team that plays defense with the enthusiasm you fill out your taxes, may not be as good a defensive team away from home and shoots free throws like their aiming at a hoop the size of a golf cup, and they're shoo-ins? Want to bet on that? Go ahead. Bear Sterns has some stock it would like to sell you too.

No, this is going to be the year of madness. The year we get back to craziness. The year we find another Fennis.

After all, there's Ben Woodside, the senior point guard for North Dakota State, who along with four of his teammates redshirted their first year just for one shot at March Madness.

There's Eric Maynor, whose already put his stamp on March Madness with a program-rocking upset of Duke two years ago. Like Dembo, you could play a box-and-one against him, pit the box against him and the one against everyone else, and he'd still drop 15.

There's Kenny Hasbrouck, whose Siena Saints upset Vanderbilt a year ago and plays with his father whooping it up on the sideline in his wheelchair. The elder Hasbrouck suffers from multiple sclerosis and can't walk, but his connection to his son is strong enough to bench press all of Ford Field.

There's Jeremiah Dominguez and Garrison Carr, two pint-sized shot poppers for Portland State and American, respectively. Obama's kids might be able to post these guys up, but they're going to make a pair of scoreboard operators Google carpal tunnel syndrome.

There's Artsiom Parakhouski, the Beast of Belarus, who's a walking sales pitch for spell checkers and won Big South conference player of the year honors in leading the Radford Highlanders into the NCAA tournament. He's only been playing basketball for five years, about half as long as it seems opposing center Tyler Hansbrough has been in Chapel Hill, a guy whose jersey still has a belt on it. Parakhouski has only been speaking English for two, but that probably still puts him ahead of Charlie Villanueva's twittering.

And if it's not them then its Humpty Hitchens, a snack food of a name you'll have rattling around your head like a Saved by Zero ad or Northern Iowa's Kwadzo Ahelegbe, whose name you wouldn't pronounce correctly the first time even if you Merriam or Webster.

Whoever it is is, they will be not all that different from you or I.

Except they've got a better jumper and a better story and may at some point stare goofily back at you from the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Because starting today, the Madness is back.

And Fennis is coming with it.