If UVM wins, it would have the trump card on central New York. Forever. A 16 only beats a 1 for the first time once. Are you brave enough to call it?

Have made no attempts to mask my subjectivity to the Vermont Catamounts (what a nickname). A reset: I lived in South Burlington, Vt., from 1991 to 1998. Grew up there. Went to high school there. Failed to kiss many a young lady there. Was a seven-minute drive from the UVM campus. Have a few friends who are UVM alumni. I didn’t attend a D-I school, so I root for Vermont out of nostalgic, can’t-believe-this-team-actually-got-good reasons.

My heart wants me to find the onions in my system to pick Vermont over Syracuse in the first round Friday night in Buffalo. Let’s pause and think just how freaking unbelievably awesome that would be. Picture it. Envision it. Hear it. Gus Johnson’s going to be on the call, so you get a good idea of what it would be like.

And it would be historic, of course, because 16′s are 0 for 100. What a perfect number to break the cycle. There are few teams who deserve a first-round win more than UVM after the team’s past 10 days.

And there’s a bit of history (and that’s all) on UVM’s side outside of beating Syracuse before. The Orangemen fell in the first 15-over-a-2 game, back in 1990, when Richmond pull off the then-unthinkable.

Is a 16 winning still considered unthinkable?

Some people are calling their shot right now (mostly only UVM homers) and a Twitter feed dedicated to pumping out good karma is giving updates constantly on the impending rematch from 2005. Of course, the Internet messageboards have gotten a little ugly with all the mud being chucked around.

I don’t know what team was the most in vogue 16-over-1 pick, but UVM is approaching trendy with each passing hour.

The second-best story to this being a coda to 2005 is the brothers Joseph playing against one and other. UVM’s Maurice Joseph (the older one) is worth the follow on Twitter and Kris Joseph is probably the most valuable sixth man in the country, though he’ll probably now start since Arinze Onuaku won’t be playing.

Both of their reactions on Twitter after seeing the brackets were absolutely terrific. If you’d like to read a story on them, this is probably one of the five best profile pieces this week, with MoJo repping an old-school Hawks jersey.

What’s terrible is, for as badly as I want Vermont to win, this would be the worst possible year for a 16 to finally beat a 1, what with all the expansion talk that’s happened in the past 10 weeks. If anything else is needed for the bracket bloaters to hammer home their argument, it would be this kind of result.

A bittersweet proposition. When it comes down to it, though, 99 percent of the country will be rooting for the Catamounts to win if the game’s close with two minutes to go, consequences and domino effects be damned.