The Butler Bulldogs and West Virginia Mountaineers punched the first two tickets for the Final Four last night as the NCAA Tournament continues to wind down. Both teams pulled off the upsets of higher-seeded opponents to keep up with this March’s theme of anarchy and brackets explosion. With the Final Four scheduled for Indianapolis, it will also be a historical homecoming of sorts for the surprising Bulldogs.
Ohio State is out of the tournament now as well as the two other teams from the state in Xavier and Ohio. Despite that, there are still a lot of news-worthy items to discuss in relation to the ever-crazy college basketball world. Feel free to post your comments on the following or today’s schedule of games below. Tennessee takes on Michigan State at 2:20 pm while Duke plays Baylor at 5:05 pm, all on CBS:
So let’s get this straight: either Butler, Tennessee or Michigan State will play in the NCAA Tournament championship this season. Does that bother you? Does that make you want to destroy things? Yeah, that’s what I thought. For all of the accolades and excitement of the NCAA Tournament, it has the potential to give you lemons like this. Think the CBS execs are happy about the chaos? Certainly the exciting games and Gus Johnson meltdowns get viewers excited, but the lack of mass-audience name recognition definitely has to hurt. This is why I am definitely against any sort of expansion of the field.
The Butler Final Four appearance will be huge yet again for the mid-majors, but is it as historical as George Mason in 2006? That season, the Patriots went to the national semifinals as an nobody 11-seed from the Colonial Conference. They upset top-seeded Connecticut on their path to the Final Four but eventually lost to tournament champion Florida. This season on the other hand, Butler is a five seed that has hovered around the national rankings all season long. They had quality wins over Ohio State, Xavier, Northwestern, Siena, Wright State and Minnesota throughout the season. Am I happy for the team? Sure, but this shouldn’t be as big of a surprise at all.
West Virginia proved that they may be the new favorites to win the title with their performance against Kentucky. By forcing the Wildcats to live on the three point line (4-31 for the night), Bobby Huggins and his team dominated the entire game. They are deep, they are long and they proved their defensive talent against arguably the most talented collegiate team of the past decade. John Calipari’s team will have at least three top 20 picks in this year’s draft along with two others that have first-round potential at some point. Congrats to Huggins on his continued success and I’m still pissed that Cincinnati fired him and pushed him away from the state of Ohio.
I’ll admit it proudly here today: I failed to fill out an NCAA Tournament bracket this season. Yeah, I was swamped with school work and other school-related activities the week the bracket was announced, but am I really ashamed to say that? The brackets this year were awful. As I was discussing with some friends the other day, how in the world could you have accurately picked this Final Four? This unique person had to have been a Butler fan with a passion for short-winded Cinderella runs and no knowledge of how the tournament historically plays out. Seriously, there will be just two of the top 16 teams in the seeds advancing to the national semifinals. The potential permutations of any 64-team bracket are astronomical, and I think I’m just as well off this year enjoying the ride as a casual fan instead of as an angry bracket-watcher.
One last thing to note is that there still is one regional team playing college basketball as the Dayton Flyers advanced to the NIT Final Four last week. Dayton fell out of NCAA at-large contention after a brutal 8-8 conference record, but moved to the semifinals with impressive road wins over Cincinnati and Illinois. The senior-laden Dayton team will take on Ole Miss Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, with the winner advancing to take on the victor of North Carolina/Rhode Island. The Flyers are finally starting to click this season after a long stretch of disappointments, especially in close games on the road. Best of luck to them this week and hopefully they can end this season on a continued high note.
(Photo via Robert Galbraith/Reuters)
The Butler Bulldogs and West Virginia Mountaineers punched the first two tickets for the Final Four last night as the NCAA Tournament continues to wind down. Both teams pulled off the upsets of higher-seeded opponents to keep up with this March’s theme of anarchy and brackets explosion. With the Final Four scheduled for Indianapolis, it will also be a historical homecoming of sorts for the surprising Bulldogs.
15 Comments
I personally love the fact that 3 top seeds are gone. Syracuse was overrated and Kentucky ran into a bad matchup. Kansas losing shocked me though. I’m pulling for Butler or West Virginia, because Tennessee still has me bitter and I’m anti-Michigan. I hate Duke too.
I, for one, hope that UNI wins the whole damn thing.
Thanks for mentioning my own Dayton Flyers! We’ll take an NIT championship over a first-round NCAA loss anyday.
@ Ryan – If you see my author description box above, you’ll see I’m currently at UD as well. Nice to see some post-season wins and this success definitely helped out Brian Gregory. This season was a huge bust and most of the earlier blame was on him.
Jacob, I can understand your being against an expansion of the field as well as the line you took that “the lack of mass-audience name recognition definitely has to hurt” (someone else’s wallet), but have you no love for underdogs? Not every Cinderella run loses its wind. Knowing little about NCAA basketball, if I end up watching a game about whose teams I have no particular knowledge or affection, I generally root for the underdog. But that’s just me.
I’m with Phil on this one. Who cares about the number seeds who were overhyped all year? I’m pulling for the underdogs.
It’s the complete opposite of the BCS. The regular season means nothing. In fact, if you are a mid-major or major, as long as you qualify for the conference tournament, you have a shot at the national title. One example could be Ohio, a team that struggled all season but gelled as the #9 seed in the MAC Tournament. They took down Kent State, Akron and Georgetown to make it to the second round. So their 30 plus games earlier this season meant nothing as long as they actually tried in their final half dozen.
Not saying that either system is right or wrong. Just that there are definite advantages and disadvantages to both. The competitive spirit of the NCAA Tournament usually wins the popular support, but the chaos this season made me think twice about which is really better.
Well, that explains better where you’re coming from.
That said, I’d love to see Kent State in the final someday! 🙂
Huggy got forced out of UC after embarrassing himself and the school getting a DUI (and having it on film and thus airing on national TV) and having the worst graduation rate in the NCAA. I don’t think any coach in America could survive that.
Great tourney this season love seeing the lesser known schools prevail. I’m hoping Baylor can take Duke out here but right now the game is close in the first. I’m pulling for Butler and Baylor if not Baylor then definitely WV.
I’m definitely pulling for Butler and unlike George Mason, they could legitimately do it. None of the other three teams are world beaters like UNC was last year.
IMO, The “chaos” you (accurately) describe is really due to the dearth of talent in NCAA hoops these days more than any crazy freak phenomenon at work in the tourney itself. It’s downright hard to watch these games sometimes, especially after watching the Cavs at their all-time peak on a regular basis. I know the comparison obviously isn’t fair, but come on – WVU advanced to the Final Four without making a 2 pt field goal for an entire half… over a 1 seed! That’s just absurdly bad basketball in my eyes… ugh.
Oh well, that said, it’s still great when an exciting game goes down to the wire.
Most exciting tournament in years…or a failure of seeding.
I’m still pissed that Cincinnati fired him and pushed him away from the state of Ohio.
As a UC alum I support this statement. I would root for a Huggins team over UC (very convienent?)
Also props on not doing a bracket. Anyone pretending it is more than gambling is a fool (or watches an absolutely insane amount of college basketball).
First time in 20 years I voluntarily did not fill out a bracket, and I am a much happier man for it. My bracket would have sucked anyway.
As a Duke grad student, I think it’s safe to say I’m moderately happy with the tournament so far.
And come on, expanding to 96 teams? Who wants to watch that many games of basketball lower in quality than the NIT just for the chance that every couple years one team past the first 32 might make it far?