It's time again for March Madness, that quirky time of the year when we kick off our shoes and crank up the popcorn maker to sit back and enjoy the annual countdown to find out who has the best college basketball team in America.

For us University of South Carolina fans, they should call it "March Sadness." Hasn't been much to cheer about since Frank McGuire was the coach way back in the sixties and seventies.

I got to know McGuire on an intimate basis when we joined forces to raise a bunch of money for the Newman Center, a Catholic Ministry on the campus of the University of South Carolina, in 1971.

I had just been elected Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men's fraternal organization at the ripe old age of 21. I figured that Coach McGuire was good for several thousand dollars of fund raising. He was always such a class act, both on and off the court.

McGuire graduated from St. John's University in 1936. He also played pro basketball briefly in the American Basketball League, and then became the head basketball and baseball coach at his alma mater.

After bringing the St. John's baseball team to the College World Series in 1949 and the basketball team to the Final Four in 1952 - becoming one of only three coaches to achieve both accomplishments - he left St. John's to become basketball coach at the University of North Carolina. He guided North Carolina to the 1957 NCAA title, winning the championship game 54-53 in triple overtime against the Wilt Chamberlain-led Kansas team, and finishing the season with a perfect 32-0 record.

Following his brief period in the NBA, McGuire became basketball coach at the University of South Carolina in 1964.

The Gamecocks quickly achieved national prominence and went undefeated in the ACC in 1970 and won the ACC tourney in 1971. The Gamecocks would leave the Atlantic Coast Conference to become an independent. To this day, that is the only ACC tourney title won by a school based in the state of South Carolina. McGuire would then go on to take USC to the NCAA tournament several times as an independent.

McGuire holds the record for most victories in a season without a loss, together with Bobby Knight of the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, at 32-0.

He achieved the number one ranking with both the University of North Carolina and South Carolina, and is one of three coaches--Larry Brown and Roy Williams are the others--to take two different schools to the NCAA Finals.

McGuire was famous for using his New York City ties to enlist players to come south to play at UNC and USC, and was known as one of the top recruiters in the sport, frequently joking about how successful his New York City players, many of them Jewish and Catholic, were in Baptist-prevalent North Carolina and South Carolina.

Players that he coached or successfully recruited at the two schools include Lennie Rosenbluth, Larry Brown, Donnie Walsh, Doug Moe, Billy Cunningham, Bobby Cremins, John Roche, Tom Owens, Kevin Joyce, Brian Winters, Mike Dunleavy, Sr. and Alex English.

I personally got to know Cremins and Roche the best. Roche is now a lawyer in Denver. My closest friend on that team was John "the bruiser" Ribbock, with whom I enjoyed going barhopping back in the days when I was single and mostly stupid. Ribbock and I also tended bar together at the Knights of Columbus in those days, so we became pretty close friends. He was most famous for decking Coach "Lefty" Drizzell of Maryland during one of those bitter ACC basketball games.

Coach McGuire had been the first coach to take two different schools to the finals of the NCAA basketball tournament. He became the second coach - joining Eddie Hickey - to take three different schools to the NCAA tournament. McGuire was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1977, and retired in 1980.

He is the winningest coach in South Carolina history, and is still the second-winningest coach in North Carolina history. He died three days after his 80th birthday in Columbia, South Carolina.