Sweet, kind, precious readers: the NCAA basketball tournament has begun, and my bracket is as ruined as Frankie Muniz’s career. I’ve abandoned all hopes of winning the tournament my book club and I set up, and I’m instead focusing on supporting the real heroes, our own Syracuse University Men’s Basketball team. With today’s game ahead, I have a suggestion for our team to pull out the win: Syracuse basketball should score more points.

Today’s game against Middle Tennessee, the underdog who made Michigan State cry about half as bad as I did watching “Cars 2,” will be a test of skill, spirit and how well five grown, sweaty men can throw a ball in the air. Scoring more points is the only way we stand a chance.

Now, I know this is a radical proposition, but I think I may have something here. If our team scores more points than the other team, we’ll win. Isn’t that what we want? Winning is pretty dope. Scoring more points would put us in a drastically better position to beat Middle Tennessee. Not only this, but it would make the game more exciting. According to studies, exciting games are definitely better than boring games.

In their last game against Dayton, the Syracuse men’s team scored 70 points. Now, that’s pretty decent, and I’m so proud of them, but what if they scored 71 points? Or even 90 points? Or what if — and I’m just going to put this out there — what if they scored 200,534 points? Middle Tennessee wouldn’t know what hit them. They would be like, “Whoa, Nellie, what just hit us? I don’t know.” Then they would lose, we would win, and that would be sick, man. Not to toot my own horn, but I think this idea is just spectacular. I’m going to get an Indiegogo page going so we can make this happen.

That’s how sports work, right?

The game would be so much more exciting if SU scored more points. More points means more suspense, and more suspense means I’m going to eat my nachos faster. If we score more, I might have to buy, like, two or three boxes of nachos. Now, THAT is what I call quality entertainment comparable to “Cars 2.”

If SU can score more points and pull off the victory, I can walk into my book club, throw my copy of “Goodnight Moon” on the table and say, “I don’t need your stinking bracket, Frankie Muniz. Your career is buttered toast, so stop trying to put me in my place. How did you even get in this book club? Why are you in Syracuse? Let’s play Jenga.” I’m so much better at Jenga than predicting sports matches. Jenga is my game—although Chutes and Ladders is a close second.

Now, I know this might seem like a difficult plan, this whole “scoring more points” thing. But if I could get Kelley Wright to go to the eighth grade dance with me, Syracuse basketball can score more. I asked Kelley somewhere between 12 and 23 times to go to the dance. I gave her fresh-picked dandelions from my backyard, bought her a couple boxes of Triscuits and even told her that I thought her mom was a very respectable woman. Kelley finally said yes, and even though I couldn’t see through the brown paper bag she made me wear, I think that was the best night of her life. I know it was mine.

So if I could score points with Kelley, Syracuse can score more points against Tennessee. Kelley was also the only ten I could see, and I don’t think that’s any coincidence. The gods plan these things out. How else are you supposed to win the tournament?

Ian McCourt is a junior television/radio/film major. He will be critically analyzing the Marxist messages of “The Hungry Caterpillar” at his next book club meeting. You can reach him at iwmccour@syr.edu or follow him @OrderInMcCourt on Twitter.

Published on March 20, 2016 at 5:18 pm