Girlfriend Picks Bracket Based On Which Mascots Speak To Her In Cryptic Dreams

By Devin Wallace

Admitting she doesn’t follow college basketball closely, Danica Meyers says she takes a silly approach to her March Madness bracket picks, simply choosing the winner based on whichever team’s mascot appears in her cryptic fever dreams and whispers riddles incomprehensible to the rational mind.

“I don’t take March Madness too seriously,” said Meyers, while explaining to her therapist who The Fruit of Death is (referring to the Syracuse Orange). “I just look at the two mascots and pick the one that ordered me to deliver the sacred lamb to the mountaintop while I slept.”

Meyers’ boyfriend, Jack Tally, says he enjoys their burgeoning discussions about basketball, whether it’s while driving to work while having lunch together, or while Danica writhes in her sleep muttering about the impending reign of the Demon Deacon.

“We learn from each other,” said Tally, over the sound of muffled Latin chants echoing from the bedroom upstairs. “I’ll explain the transfer portal rules, and she’ll explain how The Stanford Tree is the angelic harbinger of a new heavenly order. It’s light, and fun. I bet her twenty dollars Baylor wins it all, and she bet me that the ‘currency of man holds no purchase in the kingdom.’” 

March Madness experts say Meyers’ approach may be correct. CBS broadcaster Ian Eagle noted that picking classic blue-chip programs can’t guarantee success. 

Instead, many tournament pickers are using things like analytics or inscrutable instructions whispered by shadowy felt-covered figures in the Lynchian landscapes of the sleeping mind, to choose their winners.

“Behold the Blue Devil, the Durham Duke, long live his reign,” chanted Eagle in a black-eyed monotone during a CBS pregame. “Vanquisher of the Catamounts, beasts of the Carcosa, Ipsi Regnabunt in Aeternum.” 

(Editor’s note: the above quote was either a prediction of Duke defeating Vermont in the Round of 64, or possibly to the end of all mankind)

When asked whether he was also taking advice from human-sized puppets instructing him from a slumbering netherworld, Eagle good-naturedly laughed and twisted his head 360 degrees around his body.

At press time, sources close to Danica and Jack revealed the couple keep their brackets in separate locations around the home: Jack, in his home office, next to a picture of his dog Puddles, while Danica hung hers in a darkened shrine next to a life-sized effigy of Purdue Pete.

End of the Bench will have more on this story after we crumble up our bracket and hail the Dark Prince, Dan Hurley.

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