MARCH MADNESS WAITING GAME. It’s been awhile since Husker basketball fans had some fun in March. By Jim D. Berryman The View From Here My brackets are halfway filled out for the big office tournament pool, and suddenly it hit me. Nebraska ain’t in it. Again. And if we were, I bet there wouldn’t be many Husker fans betting on a W for NU. The Nebraska Cornhuskers basketball team and the NCAA basketball tournament seem to go together about as much as Bush and bin Laden. Once again as March madness envelopes us, Husker basketball fans don’t have any hopes of their own. The thought keeps creeping back into your mind. "Gee, it would be nice to have Nebraska in the Big Dance." And then you go back to choosing your brackets. Of course, you can always adopt the team from where you live now. As a lifelong NU basketball fan, I don’t consider it "cheating" on the Huskers. I have a couple teams close to me in U-Conn and Central Connecticut State. Don’t know anything about Central, other than they don’t appear to be in the same league as Pittsburgh, who they face in their NCAA opener. I got into Husky-mania back a couple years ago when U-Conn beat Duke in the national championship. Great game. I even had people in Nebraska tell me that they thoroughly enjoyed watching the Connecticut vs. Duke championship. "It was a treat to watch. What a fantastic basketball game." Some of the people who made those comments? Joyce and Paul at the Sidetrack in Lincoln. (I understand Joyce and Paul are no longer staples at the Sidetrack.) Anyway, they too commented on how nice it would be to have the Huskers in the tournament. But then someone shouted that "at least in Nebraska, we got football". And then of course, Joyce and Paul broke into a rousing rendition of “There Is No Place Like Nebraska”. When is it going to happen for the Husker hoopsters? They were 13-15 this year. I’m not sure. I think the ghost of Danny Nee haunts the team, even though I wasn’t a tremendous supporter of Nee in his time in Lincoln. But I remember seeing the Huskers at Madison Square Garden in New York in the finals of the NIT a few years back. I was one of a handful of Nebraska fans taking advantage of the fact that Madison Square Garden was only an hour and a half away. Nebraska beat St. Joseph’s for the NIT championship that evening. Before the game, I saw the Huskers getting off the team bus, and Danny Nee was beaming from ear to ear. Cameras were flashing, he was shaking hands, giving the thumbs up sign to the New York media. After all, he was a hometown boy coming home to a championship game at the “Gaahhhden” (Madison Sq. Garden for Midwesterners link me.) You’d be surprised how much the New York sports world is like one big hometown. New Yorkers love their sports heroes, no matter how big...or in Danny Nee’s case...small they are. But it seemed he really was enjoying his team, liked being the coach, and was having a great time, even though it was only the NIT. We'll have to see how Coach Collier does next year. I think it is his cruicial test. In addition, it seems many power-football schools are now power-basketball schools too. Look at teams in this year’s NCAA tournament who also usually have ranked football teams: Miami, UCLA, Ohio State, Illinois, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Florida, Stanford, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Maryland, USC, Alabama, and oh yea…Notre Dame. It would be nice to add the Huskers to that list. But until that happens, I’m feverishly filling out my brackets. So then I will care about Tulsa and Marquette. Or Hawaii and Xavier. Rest up tonight sports fans, because the madness is about to begin. Here's hoping we have a little Husker March Madness of our own someday. Post Feedback