I'm sitting here, swathed in comforters and buried vast drifts of marking. I'm prepping classes on Frank McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," but it's not my décor that's speaking to me (thank god). 'Tis basketball, basketball that hath ravished me. March Madness is upon me, in all its Mephistophelean, Byronic glory. Today will be dominated by the ACC Championship game, which happens to pit my beloved Tar Heels against their nemeses, the odious Blue Devils.

I may even have convinced my nonagenarian grandparents (whose only athletic interest is in tennis) to watch the Duke-Carolina game today.

My nonna: I used to play basketball, you know.
SP: I think the game has changed a bit over the past, er, century.
Nonna: Why don't they raise the basket now that they are making *all* the players so much bigger?
SP: Ummm....