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.