Bracket Busted

The Final Four is now set. Congrats to the Connecticut Huskies, Villanova Wildcats, Michigan State Spartans and the North Carolina Tar Heels. And a big thanks for nothing to the Pittsburgh Panthers, Memphis Tigers and the Louisville Cardinals for killing my hopes in becoming the back to back champ in my bracket pool. I am a college student, I need that $200 more then most. I could have bought a lot of beer with that money, and mom if you read this, by buying a lot of beer I really mean paying for my utility bill and groceries.

The biggest shock to the elite eight weekend was the upset of top seed of the tournament Louisville to a Michigan State team that the experts thought couldn't run with the uptempo and constant pressure style that Louisville plays. Well so much for that argument. While Michigan State only scored a very Big Ten like 64 points, their half court defense was stellar and forced Louisville into a lot of bad, quick shots, something that I guess is in the realm of the Cardinals offense according to the announcers. While many view this as an upset (as do I), but let's take a deeper look into the Cardinals season and we may uncover some interesting things.

First let's take a look at the Cardinals schedule...
Good Wins: @ Villanova (61-60), vs Pitt(69-63), Villanova and Syracuse in the Big East Tournament

OK Wins: @ Syracuse (67-57), vs Marquette (w/out Dominic James), would Arizona in the tournament count?

I'm not going to list the losses from earlier in the year because that was a different Louisville team, but do these wins really make a team the #1 team in the nation? The best win that this team had all year was to Villanova in the Big East tournament because that was at least on a neutral court. They also had the easiest road to the elite 8 out of all of the teams that remained as they faced a 16, 9 and a 12 seed in route to facing a 2 seeded team in Michigan State. The Spartans on the other hand was battle tested since the beginning as they beat Kansas and a hot USC team before facing Louisville. So in hindsight this wasn't much of an upset at all as we maybe overrated Louisville because of their cushioned schedule down the stretch and other teams knocking each other out. This is a team that played Villanova, Pitt and UCONN only once each this year and had the easiest conference schedule. Better luck next year to Rick Pitino and his guys.

The other big shocker of the weekend was also the best game of the weekend. This matchup was especially tough for me as I had Pittsburgh winning the championship game but all of that was taken away as Scottie Reynolds' layup with .5 seconds to go sank the Panther's title chances. What a dog fight this game was. Back and forth, back and forth. First Pitt would be up by 4 with 2 minutes to go and then it was Nova up 4 with less then a minute (which regretfully I had changed the channel, I didn't want to see my championship pick go down in flames). Nova then turned the ball over with a ridiculous full court pass that someone thought would be a good idea to try at that time. Big Time Levance as I have come to call him then hit 2 free throws to tie the game with 5.5 seconds to go and it looked like overtime. Jay Wright called a beautiful inbounds play to get that ball into the hands of his best playmaker and it worked out perfectly. Reynolds took the ball the length of the court and made the layup even after getting bumped rather hard. Reynolds is one of those players that seems like he should have graduated years ago but somehow is still not even a senior in college yet. Nova is a team that is peaking at obviously the right time and will be a very tough matchup for the Tar Heels in the Final Four.

Speaking of those Tar Heels, they pretty much dismantled Oklahoma. Everyone saw this happening as I mentioned before the game started the the Sooners had no chance of running with the Heels which drew the response of "Nobody can," from a friend and Carolina fan. Hate to say it but I have to agree with the fact that North Carolina can run teams out of the gym. Should be a fun game to watch between the two.

Not much to say about UCONN besides that AJ Price now gets more face time and Hasheem Thabeet is really tall. I will have more in depth breakdown of the Final Four when the time draws near (say thursday?).