2025-26 VCU Rams
094 · 2026-03-20 · easy
Does this look like a road? Can it really be true that it "starts here," at the junction of Interstates 70 and 75, and then does it "end here", in a different city than last time? The NCAA Tournament is run by dim oafs, by the kinds of men who never stop to ask for directions, by kindergarten poets who can't tell the difference between a metaphor and Singapore. It's the Bracket – a network of lines that enlace, a network of lines that intersect – that makes this what it is. The Bracket is an edifice mirage, existing beyond the material realm, an epic bas-relief battle carved into every metope. We all see the invisible cathedral, because we all tell each other it's right there. How can you not see it in front of you? I can draw it for you if you'd like, directly from memory. Every rectangle signifies a ceiling and a door, only half may pass at once, and the next floor up is a step closer to the sky. Does this look like a road? This is the cruelty of gravity, climbing up and falling down, sperm killing and dying for an egg. Imagine the sea, then imagine all the rivers that don't make it there, and now spend the rest of cosmic existence considering the fates of every individual waterway. The Bracket is a naturally-occurring phenomenon: Aristotle saw it, Darwin saw it, and so did Nietzsche and Malthus and Lyell too. La victoire appartient au plus opiniâtre, and the Bracket always makes sure to punish poor effort and bad luck and lazy complacency. Last night in Greenville, S.C., when the South No. 6-seeded North Carolina Tar Heels took a 19-point lead with 15 minutes left in regulation, that seemed to be enough to get to the second round. But the No. 11 Virginia Commonwealth Rams chipped away at the deficit, played rope-a-dope with UNC's jersey-popping big man, and had one guy who outshot the entire other team down the stretch. "We smelled blood," said VCU's Lazar Djokovic, no relation to the dude who's won three Brackets at Roland Garros. The Bracket favors the patient and the resilient and the brave, and occasionally the Serbians too. So I ask you for the third and final time: does this look like a road?
