'Madness' arrives early Could the five freshmen on Michigan's current basketball team cut it in a game with the original Fab Five? Probably not just yet, but players can give the matchup a try in "NCAA March Madness 2000," a new college basketball game from EA Sports. Fun, fast-paced and exciting, the game should provide hours of enjoyment to the college basketball buff. "March Madness" features 150 men's Division I teams along with 16 women's teams (sorry, no Wolverines) and 20 classic teams (including '82 North Carolina and '93 Michigan). While the selection of men's teams is thorough enough, it would have been nice to see some additional teams included in the other two categories. The biggest strength of "March Madness" is the fact that the school rosters for the game include the actual players from the team (players are identified by number and not name). For the most part (save a black and bald Gavin Groninger) the players in the game look quite a bit like their real life counterparts (although Jamal Crawford is minus a headband). This authenticity carries over to the team uniforms, where Michigan has their awful block M rags. However, it would have been nice to see the makers of the game carry this attention to detail a few steps further. The team's stadiums are major disappointments - each school's home court is really just a generic arena with the school's name and logo slapped down on it. Gamers are also unable to play the actual schedule for the team that they elect and must settle for a computer generated schedule of one of three levels of difficulty (cake, random or brutal). As basketball games go, "March Madness" is pretty easy to learn, although playing defense boils down to trying for steals or blocked shots. The players move around the court very smoothly and it shouldn't take long to master their motions. The appearance of the players is a major improvement from last year's version of the game, as they are now slightly larger and more-defined in their appearance. Another welcome improvement to the game is a new system for free-throw shooting that makes it much easier to connect from the charity stripe. Once you're in the heat of a game, listen for Dick Vitale providing color commentary throughout the action. Here, as in real life, Dick makes some good points ("Number 30 on Michigan makes everyone around him better") and some curious ones ("Number 1 (on Michigan) has go to shoot the ball more often"). Despite its shortcomings, "March Madness" is still a lot of fun to play. So lace 'em up and prepare to ball with some of the nation's finest. Originally on page 8A in the 1-31-2000 issue of the Daily.