As soon as the Gophers men's basketball team's 11:15 a.m. Thursday tip-off against Louisville was announced, I thought: This is great! It's the first of the "field of 64" games in the entire tournament, it's televised on CBS and it will make for a great lunchtime rallying point on Thursday. And as a member of the media — even one who isn't traveling for this game — I'm instinctively wired to root for early start times because of deadline pressure.