2019 NCAA Tournament, Day 1 open thread: Madness and hope

The only thing I know to be true about what will happen in the games of this 2019 NCAA Tournament, like any of the many before it, is that something unexpected will happen.

It’s never all chalk. It’s never all titanic clashes or historic upsets. That team you thought was a lock might shoot 30 percent from the field; the team you swore had no chance might get hot for an entire weekend. Last year brought us a No. 13 seed in the Final Four and a No. 16 seed in the second round, and it doesn’t even feel that crazy in retrospect.

So I’m flying blind this year, more or less. I’ll be writing about it later, but I don’t know what to make of Florida’s game against Nevada later today as of this very moment, nor do I know what to feel about Marquette and Murray State, or even, like, Gonzaga and Fairleigh Dickinson. I didn’t fill out any sort of bracket, so it would have been silly to have any sort of bracket challenge here. (Sorry, all.)

But I’ll probably still love this NCAA Tournament, because flying blind works just as well as knowing everything when it comes to March Madness.

That’s just what this magically mad tournament is, at its heart: A sporting event in a sport so saturated by parity that it genuinely feels like anything can happen, that any team can hope to be a part of something crazy and wonderful.

I hope to enjoy it as much as I can. And I hope you do, too.