I am in the middle of full blown March Madness envy. Around the country, college basketball fans are celebrating as their alma mater advances deeper into the tournament. At many schools, they’re celebrating just making the tournament.

I went to the University of Maine. The Black Bears’ season ended three and a half weeks ago. March Madness was a couple frantic hours in the first round of the America East conference tournament.

Maine is one of nearly 50 Division I schools that has never played in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. It feels like the Black Bears are closer to putting a player on Mars than they are of winning America East and earning a spot in the tournament. For every sign that the team is heading in the right direction, like this season’s big conference win over Albany, there’s a sign that the Black Bears are running in place, like the season-ending nine game losing streak.

The Maine men haven’t even won an America East conference playoff game in 11 seasons. Right now, just getting to the America East semifinals would be an accomplishment for the Black Bears. Playing one of those first four games in Dayton would be a dream come true.

I have friends who went to Syracuse who are positively giddy with the run the Orange have made in the tournament this season, especially since Syracuse was the bubbliest of bubble teams on Selection Sunday. My friends who went to Vermont still puff their chests with pride when anybody brings up the Catamounts upset win over Syracuse in the 2005 first round, and they should.

My friend Meredith is a graduate of the University of North Carolina. For her, March Madness is a yearly staple. It’s an annual spring tradition, like paying taxes or fighting through those late March winter storms. For a long time, Maine alumni could fall back on making the ice hockey tournament, but that tradition has passed. Black Bears on Ice have been to the tournament just once in the last nine seasons, in 2012.

At least the Maine women’s basketball team was competitive this season, losing a close America East championship game to a strong Albany team. After that, you can’t fault the Black Bears too much for coming up with their flattest effort of the season in a loss at Quinnipiac in the first round of the NIT. Maine isn’t back to what it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the Black Bears are in the America East race, and that’s something.

By my quick math, there are 48 men’s basketball teams currently in Division I that have never made the NCAA tournament. Let’s have a tournament for them. The schools that have gone the longest, like Maine, New Hampshire, William and Mary, Northwestern, and Army, get a bye to the second round. Winner of the tournament gets an automatic bid to next year’s dance.

When I was a teenager, I adopted North Carolina as my college basketball team, but not because of Michael Jordan like many of my peers. The reason I followed the Tar Heels was a small, crafty point guard named King Rice.

When I was in high school, Vermont high school football teams played about half their schedules in league play, and the other half, schools could schedule whatever opponents they wanted. At Mt. St. Joseph Academy, our coaches routinely scheduled strong out-of-state opponents for early season games. My freshman year, we hosted Binghamton, New York, which at the time was ranked among the nation’s top high school football teams by USA Today.

Binghamton killed us (the only loss in a state championship season), and a running back named King Rice seemed to score every time he touched the ball. The next year, I turned on a North Carolina basketball game, and that same Rice was playing point guard for the Tar Heels. I watched them to watch him, and Carolina became my team by proxy. Recently, I’ve enjoyed watching Rice coach a talented Monmouth University men’s basketball team.

I still cheer for the Tar Heels, and boo all things Duke. Still, I have no real connection to the place. I’ve never been on the Chapel Hill campus. When the Tar Heels win, I’m happy, but at the same time, I feel like a tiny parasite, living off somebody else’s joy. Just once, I want to fill out my bracket, see Maine as a 15 or 16 seed, and pick the Black Bears in a move of alumni hubris.

March in Maine is a battle between the seasons, of spring trying to shove winter to the side, while winter hangs on for as long as possible. A trip to the tournament, even to just the first round, would certainly make that March a little sunnier, no matter how tight winter’s grip.

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

<URL destination=””>tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com

</URL>Twitter: @TLazarczykMTM

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