The madness continues. Each year, millions of people, many who did not watch a single minute of NCAA basketball, fill out a bracket and hope for the best. They do this for both the men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments. I have been filling out brackets faithfully since 2001. It has been a great tradition with great people.

I started filling out brackets with just a few members of my family. My mom and brother Walter. My mom filled out brackets every year before her passing and looked forward to it very much. She won it twice and always made sure we did not forget it. She would say around Christmas time; “Only a few months away from March Madness. Remember Dennis, I won.” Miss that so much. As for my brother Walter, he still fills out a bracket with me and is a member of our growing bracket family. When I started at the Oakdale/Riverbank/Escalon newspapers in 2014, I asked my co-workers if they wanted to fill out brackets and it went over really well. So well in fact, we still fill them out together and run our contest. This year we had over 30 participants in the bracket challenge. This is with colleagues from the paper as well as other former colleagues, family and friends.

The game has grown in many ways since then. NCAA added four teams to expand it to 68 with a First Four mini tournament. At first, I was against it. I figured if the committee knew what they were doing, the right teams would get in. However, now it is a great way to get exposure for those schools and student-athletes. Adds a little more “Cinderella” to the dance. Another way it has grown is the availability of the programing. For those who were born this millennium, the only network that would carry the games was CBS. It was broadcast by region and we hoped to get the game we wanted to see. Now, every game can be seen. They are televised on CBS, TBS, TNT, TRUTV and streaming on multiple formats. No excuse to miss a single second.

I usually stay away from the top seed as my National Champion. However, this year I went with Duke (who knows if they’ll still be in it by the time this comes out) but that is my choice. I took them for a few different reasons but the two that stood out were, one, Cooper Flagg, who is widely considered the best player in the nation. Second, they also put up a ton of points. Even after Flagg went down in the ACC Tournament; Duke still found a way.

Dennis D. Cruz is a staff reporter for The Oakdale Leader, The Riverbank News and The Escalon Times. He may be reached at drcruz@oakdaleleader.com or by calling 847-3021.