March Madness brings out the best and worst of college basketball fans. They make, bet on and anguish over brackets. The lucky pack arenas to cheer on the Orange in person. Here’s four ways that some Syracuse University fans spent their opening weekend of the Big Dance.

Last-minute ticket
Kelsey Miller was nervous that she wasn’t going to make it to the game. After a morning whirlwind of internship interviews in Pittsburgh, the sophomore advertising major picked up tickets for the Orange’s Thursday game at the Consol Energy Center the only way she could.
By getting scalped. She bought her ticket from an amiable fan outside the stadium instead of stressing over finding cheap tickets online.
‘For a scalper, he was a nice guy,’ she said.
But rooting for the Orange while sitting in a section stuffed UNC Asheville fans wasn’t as easy as rocking the Carrier Dome.
‘Once UNCA got on a roll, I felt like I had a huge target on my head,’ Miller said. ‘The place was roaring for the Bulldogs, and five minutes earlier no one knew that was even their mascot. When you’re wearing orange in a sea of purple, it’s hard to hide.’
At the stadium, Miller exchanged high fives and small talk with other orange-clad fans at the game. She mingled with supporters of other schools, shaking off heckling from a Kansas State fan with a handlebar mustache and posing for a picture with a mocking poster of Fab Melo. The view wasn’t bad, either.
Miller said: ‘Sniping seats six rows up from the court from scalped tickets was just awesome.’

Bracket battle
Most fans battle in bracket pools of 10 or 20 other competitors. Stephen Cassilo is duking it out with 40 other friends to vie for his own bragging rights.
Cassilo, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, labored over his bracket for weeks leading up to the tournament. He caught seven games a week to scope out the field of teams.
‘I suffer a bad bracket every now and then,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, I’d be set to be an analyst for ESPN.’
Consuming 48 games in 96 hours is daunting, but it is Cassilo’s favorite part of the tournament. He spent the first weekend of March Madness parked on the couch in front of the TV with his family. Watching the first few games of the tournament is a family tradition for the Cassilo clan.
‘Ever since I was in middle school, my parents would let me come home at noon so I wouldn’t miss any games,’ he said. ‘Luckily, now it falls during Spring Break, so I don’t have to worry.’
When the friendly bracket competition resumes back on campus, Cassilo resorts to craftier methods to stay updated.
‘I’m always checking the Twitter-sphere to see how I’m doing,’ he said. ‘It’s the best when you know when the Cinderellas are being born and when brackets are being busted.’

Out of air
Faithful bracket makers know their hopes deflate when their picks flop.
At Syracuse University’s Information Technology and Services Office, however, hopes get popped instead. Literally.
Bob Marturano, an information technology analyst, devised the idea for a balloon-popping pool four years ago.
Sixteen staff members participate, drawing four team names from a hat: one representing each conference. The competitors blow up a balloon for each team. When a tournament game ends, the winner gets to pop the loser’s balloon.
‘The only rule is that the person whose balloon you’re popping has to be present,’ Marturano said.
The balloons hang resolutely in rainbow hues from outside each cubicle in the office. But when one technician comes away victorious, the faculty aren’t afraid to broadcast one another taking triumphant jabs at one another’s balloons.
Marturano said: ‘One of our staff members has been videotaping some of the poppers and putting them on YouTube.’

B-ball beats
The Orange has had its share of theme songs to greet the team on the court, from ‘Unfinished Business’ to ‘Shut It Down.’ But Joey Papoutsis, a junior in the Bandier Program for Music and the Entertainment Industries, decided to bring students together to write an unofficial anthem for this year’s squad.
Papoutsis, president of the student-run record label Marshall Street Records, asked student DJ Chris Baugh, who appeared on the label’s ‘Electro-Cuse’ mixtape, to produce a beat for a freestyle hip-hop track. Baugh, a junior television, radio and film major, obliged. Papoutsis decided to open tryouts to any student rapper who felt confident enough to freestyle about the team.
‘We thought it would be a cool idea to have a contest to see who could come up with the best verses about SU basketball,’ Papoutsis said.
After spending hours in Hall of Languages, Papoutsis and 14 members of the label team chose student rappers Diverze and Miraculous. They recorded the track, called ‘My Team’s Number One,’ in a single afternoon and released it in the nick of time.
‘We sent the song to the head music supervisor at ESPN,’ he said. ‘So hopefully if we keep winning, it gains traction.’
ervanrhe@syr.edu