Train Bound For Glory

Spartan Sibs Bred For Battle

Boiler Boy Sitting Pretty

Trouble ahead, trouble behind, but Train keeps chugging right down the line. He finished the Sweet 16 with seven wins to only one loss, building a 6-point lead on the field.

Train took the lead on Thursday night after big wins from Purdue and Texas Tech. He (along with Duke and Kentucky) survived valiant attempts to derail him Friday night, and he’s now the mathematical favorite to win it all.

But Train has two weaknesses. One is he had North Carolina going to the finals. They lost. The other is he picked Duke over his alma mater, Michigan State. That’s just bad karma.

It’s a mistake two players right on Train’s caboose didn’t make—the born-for-battle Spartan siblings Con Man (Connelly Bowling) and The Breeze (Cheryl Thompson).

Both Con Man and The Breeze picked Michigan State over Duke, the weekend’s marquee matchup and what may be the de facto national championship. Neither of these Spartans will go down without a fight, no matter the odds.

Con Man, now in his third year, is the only player left who can reach the ultimate Chippens mark—200 points in a single season. I would say 200 points is the Chippens equivalent of the 4-minute-mile or 60 home runs, except those have been done before. No one has ever reached 200 points in the Chippens Tournament Challenge. Can it be done? Con Man will give his honest effort.

The Breeze is in her 7th year of competition and usually finishes around her age (which I won’t disclose, but I will tell you is about twice as much as what she looks). Currently in fourth place, The Breeze is the top player with Michigan State as the champion, so her Spartans will decide if her tournament is etched forevermore in Chippens lore or if it disappears like dust in the wind.

Another player cheering for his alma mater in the Elite 8 will be Hammered Boiler. The Purdue partisan nearly pooped his pants watching his Boilers blow off an 18-point second half lead Thursday night.

He also nearly went into cardiac arrest. According to Boiler, while Purdue was self-gibbeting, he was redlining.

“This is my sitting HR at the end of regulation,” he texted Chippens HQ, along with a photo of his high-tech wrist watch indeed registering 104 bpm at 8:38 pm central time.

“What were you sitting in?” a Chippens intern replied. “Your dinner?”

Hammered Boiler will have both his AEDs (Automated External Defibrillator, Adult Emergency Diaper) ready on Saturday, and his state of intoxication—with the games, of course—will be high. Currently in sixth place, Boiler is one of only two players with both Purdue and Texas Tech in the Final Four. The other player, Gibbons, is too far behind to win.

But Boiler is in sixth place. He can win. In fact, if Purdue and Texas Tech both win Saturday, he’ll take the lead by 14 points.

“I feel like a god,” Boiler texted Chippens HQ on Friday, later claiming “autocorrect” changed his message.

But autocorrect always has a little truth to it, doesn’t it. And who wouldn’t feel like a god, riding high on the thrill of victory, the sewer stench of year after year (after year) of disappointment fading and the ever-so-slightest whiff of Chippens immortality teasing the senses.

Strap on your AEDs (both of them). It’s time to Boiler Up!