Drew Timme speaks for all of us.

“Man, I’m getting old,” Timme muttered inside the Gonzaga locker room as he slipped off his Nike sneakers late Sunday night at Ball Arena.

Timme’s 22 going on 14. It only seems like he’s worn that goofy ‘stache as a Zag for nine years.

No. 3 Gonzaga’s 84-81 win over No. 6 TCU wrapped up a rip-roaring NCAA Tournament weekend in LoDo. Gonzaga and Creighton on Sunday advanced to the Sweet 16 and Denver’s hospitality was downright “wonderful,” as Creighton coach Greg McDermott praised.

“I thought the arena was electric tonight,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few added.

While madness reigned across the Big Dance, Denver proved chalky. Only one lower seed scored a so-called upset — No. 6 Creighton, 75-66 over No. 3 Baylor. But even that wasn’t really an upset with a 1-point spread at tipoff. My bracket was toast by Saturday. You?

“Mine’s pretty good thanks to my Bluejays!” said Rev. Daniel Hendrickson, the Creighton University president.

Think God still has a perfect bracket? He’s the only one after No. 1 Kansas and No. 1 Purdue got sent home for bad behavior and No. 15 Princeton pulled off two upsets for the ages.

“Anything is possible!” as Princeton guard Blake Peters emphasized on TNT.

As brackets busted from Tucson to West Lafayette, the final team to survive Ball Arena gave the blueprint for the eventual national champion. The champ’s going to need that one guy who is the best player in the joint and everybody knows it. Bring a mustache, too?

Bonus points.

Timme put the jokes away and got down to business against TCU and his homestate of Texas. The Zags trailed by 10 when Timme, a three-time All-American, took over the game to finish with 28 points. He scored every way, even with a 3-pointer, his third of the season.

TCU made a critical error prior to tipoff. The Horned Frogs poked the bear, suggesting Timme wouldn’t be all that much different from what they faced in the Big 12. Oops. Bad idea.

“Throw lighter fluid on the fire if you wish,” Timme said after he poured in 28 points.

“I definitely took exception to that,” he added.

Strolling through the hallway a half hour after the final horn, I noticed something about Timme that reminds of another maestro in the paint at Ball Arena: Jokic arms. Timme’s biceps and shoulders looked like they survived a mountain lion attack, scratched and bright red all over.

Yet it was the ninth time he’s poured in 20 points in an NCAA Tournament game during his career as Gonzaga’s all-time scoring leader. Here’s a hunch that unless the Princeton and Florida Atlantics have a college superstar, the regional finals will be dominated by the usuals.

Gonzaga now has the most NCAA Tournament wins in Denver, going 5-1 between 2011, 2016 and this year. No. 3 Gonzaga gets No. 2 UCLA in Las Vegas on Thursday in the Sweet 16.

“That’s eight in a row, which is just an incredible testament to our program,” said Few, whose Zags lead the nation with eight straight trips to the second weekend.

But all of the chaos elsewhere wasn’t supposed to happen with the emergence of Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) and a crazy transfer portal. Didn’t you hear the Haves were supposed to widen the gap from the Have Nots? Look what’s happened so far: This marks only the second time since 1980 one of Duke, North Carolina, Kansas or Kentucky hasn’t made the Sweet 16.

Here’s how one NCAA Tournament head coach explained it: “The portal and NIL actually made it more ‘mid-major’ because the guy that sat on the bench now gets to play at a different school as opposed to waiting his turn to take over.”

By the time half the Sweet 16 had been written in Sharpie, six of the eight qualifiers showed a heavy presence of transfers from other programs. Kansas State retooled with ACC and SEC alums. Michigan State pilfered the Big East. San Diego State hit up the Pac-12 and Big 12.

Only two didn’t slide into the portal’s DMs: UCLA and Princeton, a bona-fide Cinderella after stunning No. 2 Arizona and No. 7 Missouri from a 15 seed. See, it’s not necessary to dive head-first into the portal, but it sure helps. 

The champ will need a bad man, and Gonzaga has one. Same for Alabama with Brandon Miller, Houston with Marcus Sasser, UCLA with Jaime Jaquez. Take your pick, but gimme Timme.

“I think he’s is the best player in college basketball,” Few said.

How to survive a tournament that’s gone mad?

Find a Drew Timme. Bonus points for a ‘stache.