Mad About March

21. Billy Packer 's annual foot-in-mouth syndrome. No, Billy, Greg Oden wasn't the main story line of last year's final. ( Florida 's title repeat was sort of noteworthy.) And Larranaga and George Mason ? They might have deserved that bid after all.

22. More loose lips at postgame press conferences. Some alltime gems: "Have you ever done anything for a weekend that maybe you didn't want anybody knowing about? And [as the Eagle], you know how close you can get to the cheerleaders?"
—Tennessee's Bruce Pearl in 2005 on subbing for the school mascot when he was a student at Boston College

"I live in Connecticut . I'm a Red Sox fan. Tennessee is the Yankees , and [ Pat Summitt ] is George Steinbrenner ."
—UConn's Geno Auriemma at the 2003 Final Four

"We want to win this championship bad so that the NCAA guys will have to stare at the trophy on coach [ Jerry Tarkanian 's] desk when they ask all those questions during the next investigation."
—UNLV's Larry Johnson the night before the 1990 final

23. Coaches' wives becoming nearly as famous as their husbands. Margaret McCaffery (below), the outspoken spouse of Siena coach Fran McCaffery and a former star player at Notre Dame, was ejected from one of Fran's games for her tirades against refs.

24. Players taking exams on the day between games.

25. North Carolina coach Sylvia Hatchell 's summation of Charlotte Smith's title-clinching trey in '94: "the second-greatest miracle to take place on Easter Sunday."

26. Unlikely heroes. Lorenzo Charles , Harold Jensen , Keith Smart , Scotty Thurman .

27. Watching UCLA 's Love pop threes. It never looks natural, yet the ball almost always goes in.

28. Seeing all the different court designs (like the giant orange keys in Boise ). It's a fashion show for basketball courts.