You are looking live at today’s main event. No. 3 Oklahoma and No. 10 West Virginia will open and close for top-ranked Red Panda.

It’s been more than three years since Her Grace last visited us, but there’s a reason. No, she was not retired, as was widely stated. She was instead away for two full seasons because of some intensely personal reasons.

Panda is, as you probably know, the best. My favorite. I’ve been interested since the first time I saw her perform years back, which was the first of, like, five performances I saw that season. The schedule was kind. But I’ve always had questions about her and her act. And now, having spent 21 minutes on the phone with her one day last month, I have answers. (And her phone number, so if you get an invite to my birthday party …)

She is a third-generation acrobat. Her mother juggled bowls, of course, and her father was a trapeze artist. She began traveling the globe when she was 11. She moved to the United States in 1990 and worked at Disney World. Her name combines a lucky color in China and her home country’s national animal. Her act isn’t all that uncommon, at least not in China, but she’s also a magician on the side who performs for smaller crowds in the basketball offseason and is known to turn bowls of rice into bowls of water.

The most interesting part of her tale, it turns out, is her absence and her return.

She made herself disappear in May 2013. Her dad was diagnosed with cancer. Her mother was crestfallen. Panda took time off, bowing out of America’s Got Talent — the reaction from the judges at 1:54 is just the best — and knocked out her remaining dates without accepting future bookings, so she could be with her parents. Then she broke her wrist. Then her father passed away, which was hard for the entire family. Performing was not on her mind.

“It was a very difficult time,” she said. “This was my dad’s creation. My dad taught me. He taught me since I was 7 years old. Acrobats ride unicycles, and we always have a tradition of flipping bowls. It’s a traditional Chinese acrobat act and people stand on shoulders or a ladder flipping bowls.

“My dad thought it would be more interesting to do it on a unicycle. When I started performing, I could only do three bowls, but we kept adding them as we continued for two for three years. He was always on the side teaching me, so it was hard for me.”

It was difficult for Niu’s mother, too, and she was struck by profound sadness.

“It was 50 years they were together,” Niu said. “When he was ill, I was helping both of them at the same time, and my mother was very stressed watching my father go through all of the therapy.”

Niu, who lives in San Francisco, spent time with her mother, and they worked through their grief together. It was a while before Niu was ready to perform again, but this is what she was raised to do.

“I was always watching my parents perform when I was younger, and I always remembered how when they did something the crowd was clapping for them,” Niu said. “When I started performing, I had the same reactions and thought they were enjoying it, which I liked.”

By the time she was 11, she was part of a famed acrobat troupe that traveled around the world. When she moved to the U.S., she worked for a while at Disney World. Niu performed her first halftime show in 1993, and has done magic shows for far smaller crowds in the offseason for years. Naturally, those can involve bowls, and she’s known to transform bowls of rice into bowls of water.

She’s been back on her unicycle since October, when she returned to mid-court and huge audiences at halftime of the home opening game for the Memphis Grizzlies.

“I was very, very nervous because I was off for two years,” she said. “The act was actually a little bit longer than normal, maybe a minute or so longer, I guess because of being nervous, and I was trying to slow down and do everything right.”

So Panda is back on the halftime circuit, back to doing what she does best. Rejoice!