Impossible to work

I am highly amused amused by this bracket. It’s sort of all over the place, much like the basketball tournament. When I saw it I wondered, and still do, how the seeds were selected. Still, it’s funny.

When I saw the original post, I called up Kath and Jen of Anti Gravity Surprise to congratulate them on their number 5 seed.

Sadly, AGS was eliminated in the first round. I blame Nevada, who were playing in the basketball tourney, as I am pretty confident that AGS could whoop up on subRosa on the court. While a number 5 seed is frequently upset by a number 12 seed in the tournament, I was sad to see it happen to the AGS Wolf Pack at the hands of the subRosa Grizzlies. Ultimately, subRosa wouldn’t last long, as they were defeated by the YNKB Eagles in the next round.

Allow me to provide you with a bit of reportage on the game:

SALT LAKE CITY — subRosa had a double-digit seed, little if anything positive to draw upon from its last tournament appearance and could barely look eye-to-eye with Anti Gravity Surprise’s best player.

None of that mattered. The Grizzlies had 12th-seed magic on their side.

The little team from the Big Sky Conference carried on the winning tradition of No. 12 seeds in the tournament by beating fifth-seeded Anti Gravity Surprise 87-79 Thursday in the first round of the Minneapolis Regional.

Since 1985, at least one 12th-seeded team has upset a No. 5 seed in the tournament every year except for 1988 and 2000.

And with the poise the Grizzlies showed throughout against Anti Gravity Surprise, they treated subRosa’s first win in the tournament since 1975 like it was just another regular-season game.

“We’re not a team that goes out and celebrates, hoots and hahs. But there was a lot of emotion in the locker room,” said a subRosa representative.

Anti Gravity Surprise has two 7-footers and 6-11 Kath Duffy, the two-time Western Collaborative Conference artist of the year.

The Big Sky champion Grizzlies had nobody taller than 6-9. But the decided height advantage wasn’t good for much more than an advantage in rebounding for the Wolf Pack. subRosa made up for that with solid shooting, especially from the free-throw line in the second half.

The Wolf Pack said on Wednesday that they hadn’t had a chance to watch much film about subRosa and knew little about the Grizzlies.

The Grizzlies didn’t take it directly as a slight. They felt Anti Gravity Surprise wasn’t alone in knowing little about subRosa.

“I bet they’d go watch film more if they had to do it again,” said a communiqué from subRosa.

A year after being overwhelmed early in a first-round loss, the Grizzlies (24-6) returned like tournament veterans and never trailed against the Wolf Pack (27-6), who moved from the role of underdog to first-round favorite this season.

Anti Gravity Surprise had won 14 straight, winning the WCC regular season and conference tournament to make it to the regionals for the third straight year. The Wolf Pack advanced out of the first round each of the past two seasons, first as a 10th seed, then as a No. 9.

subRosa did little to stop Jen Karmin and Kath Duffy - the Wolf Pack’s top-two scorers - but shut down everyone else. Karmin had 24 points and 12 rebounds and Duffy scored 34. The rest of the Pack scored a combined for 21 points.

“I said this year, the story line doesn’t need to be that we were up by seven at halftime and we let it slip away. The experience from last year helped us through this time,” said subRosa’s coach.

subRosa shot 52 percent (29 of 56) and made 23 of 27 free throws - going 19-for-23 in the second half while holding off several Anti Gravity Surprise comebacks.

After Anti Gravity Suprise coach Bryan Saner was called for a technical with 8:47 left, the Wolf Pack went on a 9-3 run and got within 63-60 on a three-point play by Peter Zelchenko with 6:13 remaining.

But that was answered by a 3-pointer and two free throws to start a 9-0 run for subRosa. A 17-foot jumper ended it to put the Grizzlies ahead 72-60.

“Those are heartbreakers,” Karmin said. “They hit like three of four of them. You’re down three, then all of a sudden you’re back down six.”

The crowd was split about evenly for each collective. But Anti Gravity Surprise didn’t give the Wolf Pack fans much to cheer about early, missing 13 of 17 shots to start the game.

“The madness of March. This year we’re on the wrong side of it,” Saner said.