The NCAA tournament has more nicknames than the fat kid with red hair who was named after his maternal grandfather. There's March Madness, the Big Dance, the Show, the Road to the Final Four. Add another - Second Chance City.
Half of the four teams which received top seeds Sunday didn't even win their conferences. That's all old news now because it's six wins and you're national champion. No one knows that like Duke, which is on a 12-game NCAA winning streak and go after national title No. 3.That's jumping ahead. There's 32 games this weekend, many a mere formality to get the smaller conferences a chunk of the financial pie and some national exposure. The rest are matchups that begin the trip that former North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano characterized as "win and survive."
One of the non-champion top seeds, No. 1 North Carolina - which lost to Georgia Tech on Sunday in the Atlantic Coast Conference title game - has to drive 74 miles to Winston-Salem to meet East Carolina, the only team in the field of 64 with a losing record. Despite the in-state connection, there isn't much history: North Carolina won their only previous meeting 40 years ago.
"We're pleased that we're seeded No. 1. That still doesn't mean anything," Tar Heels coach Dean Smith said. "I think all the teams feel like we've just gotten started with another new tournament this week in Winston-Salem. I hope we can bounce back and play as hard as we did today and play better."
Of course, none of the No. 1 seeds have tough opening matchups.
Indiana, the Big Ten champion, travels just down the road to Indianapolis and faces Mid-Continent Conference champion Wright State.
"To be honest with you, I don't think anybody wants to go there and play Indiana," Raiders coach Ralph Underhill said. " We haven't played Indiana before. It's very exciting for me. I've been here 15 years. This is our first time in the tournament as a Division I team."
Kentucky, which won the Southeastern Conference tournament on its own floor, moves to Nashville as the Southeast Regional's top seed and gets Rider, the champion of the Northeast Conference. Michigan, the runner-up to Indiana in the Big Ten, is No. 1 in the West, and its first opponent will be Coastal Carolina, the Big South champion, which scared Indiana a few years ago in the opening round.
Each regional has a flavor of its own as the teams seek a trip to New Orleans for the season's last three games on April 3 and 5.
The East is the college basketball version of the NFC Central, a blue collar collection that will give you defense and more defense. North Carolina isn't too shabby with its traps and second-seeded Cincinnati is in your face from the opening tap. Add in Massachusetts, Arkansas, St. John's, Rhode Island, Purdue and Nebraska and shooting percentages already are dropping.
Look for North Carolina to stroll easy until Cincinnati shows up looking for a return trip to the Final Four, when the Bearcats cap a run that again has Bob Huggins' name involved in every rumor about coaching vacancies.
The Midwest is the regional of coaches. If names like Bob Knight, Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Denny Crum, Eddie Sutton and Pete Gillen don't have you reaching for a clipboard and whistle, you haven't been paying a whole lot of attention.
The most intriguing first-round matchup is between California, the team run by Todd Bozeman, the 29-year-old assistant who replaced the fired Lou Campanelli, and Louisiana State.
Krzyzewski gets to go home to Chicago for the first two games, and Duke should respond like a team with players who are weighed down with championship rings. Krzyzewski prevailed over Knight, his mentor, in last year's Final Four, and the guess here is he will do it again this year to reach the national semifinals for the sixth straight year.
The West is a collection of familiar favorites. Everybody knows about Michigan and the freshman class that went to the title game last season. But there's also schools like Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, Temple, Missouri, Arizona, Iowa State, Illinois and UCLA.
It's almost impossible to imagine any team from that group coming up with a game to beat Michigan when the Wolverines are right.
The Southeast is the players' regional. A pickup game here could be the best viewing of the month. Try this for a roster: Jamal Mashburn of Kentucky, Rodney Rogers of Wake Forest, Anfernee Hardaway of Memphis State, Terry Dehere of Seton Hall, Charlie Ward of Florida State, Josh Grant of Utah.
The best game of the grid should be Florida State's wide-open offense against Seton Hall's stinging man-to-man defense. That defense is the reason the Pirates should prevail, even over Kentucky and its inside-outside attack led by Mashburn.