March Madness: The Best Team in the NCAA Won

Well...the madness is over.  UConn won the National Title, and I have to say it did so in one of the most boring games I've seen.  When it comes to basketball, I need a good offensive game to be interested.  Defensive games are fun to watch in football because of the big hits and such, but in basketball, hits are frowned upon more than they are in soccer.  And defensive games generally just mean sloppy.

I mean look at some of these stats.  You can start with the final scoreline (53-41) and get an idea that the game was slow and boring.  Then you look at the shooting statistics and you realize that it wasn't just good defense, it was really bad offense.   Butler shot 12 for 64 on the night for a whopping 18.8%.  9 of those hoops were from 3-point land, meaning that in a 40 minute game, Butler only made 3 baskets inside the arc (barely over 10%).  UConn wasn't all that much better. They were 19 for 55 overall for 34.5%.  And they were less than 10% from 3-point land.

But despite the less than exciting game that ultimately decided who won the title, no one can say that Connecticut did not deserve to be National Champion.  They may not be the most talented players in the country, but they are the best team in the country.  And "team" includes the coach.  Between the coach and the players, UConn is the best team out there.  They won every tournament game they played in.  The Maui Invitational to start the season, the Big East Tournament, and the NCAA Tournament.  Hard to argue with that.

And you can't really say that Butler was a fluke either.  Despite losing by 12, they made it to the Final 2 years in a row.  That certainly doesn't happen very often, and definitely not by luck.  The problem in this game is that they absolutely got dominated inside.  They could not break down UConn's interior defense.  Mostly because they were significantly smaller.

So the game in the end didn't really live up to expectations.  But the results were deserved.  The best team in the NCAA won the NCAA tournament.

Daily Highlight: National Championship to UConn

Sorry everyone, but the best I can do today is send you to ESPN.com to check out the highlights of the UConn v Butler National Title Game.  It was certainly a strange one with so many missed shots, and in the end UConn was finally able to get it's offense going and pull off the win.

March Madness: The Final Four

So the Final Four has been set for a little while now.  And we've all had time to let the weirdness soak in.  As far as I can tell, there has never been a Final Four without a #1 or a #2 seed in it.  Plus we are guaranteed one team in the Final that will be an 8 seed or lower.  And if there's one thing that I've learned from this tournament, it's that I have absolutely no idea how to predict college basketball.  But then again, there were only 2 entries out of 6 million on ESPN that predicted VCU and Butler to both be in the Final Four.  I did however manage to pick UConn to get this far.  So with all that being said who are your picks for the Final?

So this is the matchup that has the country in a buzz.  And sadly I don't know enough about either team to really make an educated guess on this.  But I know some experts have one of Butler's players as a possible MVP of the tournament.  That combined with the experience of last year I think will take them through to the final for the 2nd year in a row.

Compared to the other game, this one isn't a surprise at all.  But a 3 and a 4 seed playing in the Final 4 together is definitely out of the norm.  When UConn won the Big East tournament everyone knew they could potentially make it this far.  The fact that Kentucky managed to beat Ohio State and North Carolina is scary to any team they play against.  Both teams are playing great, and both teams have amazing coaches.  I'm going to skip out on all the stat breakdowns and everything and just stick with my initial prediction.  I had UConn in the Final from the start, so I'm sticking with that.

How's Your Bracket?

Well...I think it's time to accept defeat for my March Madness Bracket.  After the 1st round I had 2 brackets that were doing great.  One was in the 99.8 percentile on ESPN.  I only missed 2 picks out of the first round.  Unfortunately one of those was Louisville, who I had going to the final 4, and another was Michigan State who I had going to the Sweet 16.  So two costly errors, but I was still looking pretty good.

Then the 2nd Round started.  That's where the disaster was.  Really there was only one problem with the 2nd round.  Unfortunately, that had a huge impact because my pick for National Champion was knocked out in the most ridiculous finish I have ever seen.  I am obviously talking about the Pitt/Butler game

So, Pitt won the regular season title for the best conference in the country.  Sure they had a couple of more losses than the other #1 seeds, but I have no doubt they deserved a #1 seed also.  ON top of that, they seemed to me to be a team built perfectly for the tournament.  Good point guard play, and good big men.  And they play physical.  So my question is, what happened to the refs swallowing their whistles at the end of the game?  You almost never see fouls like that called at the end of the game.  They're too impactful.  And while both teams kind of suffered from interesting (to say the least) foul calls at the end, the last one that sent the Butler player to the line in a tie game with no time on the clock was one of the dumbest calls I've ever seen.

I don't know...maybe I'm just bitter that Pitt underachieved in the tournament yet again, and that my National Champion pick is gone after the 2nd round.