What a tournament this has been.
Over the weekend, the NCAA tournament gave us the moments that all fans wait for. There were traditional powers fighting for every last loose ball, last-second heroics from the unlikeliest of sources, and favorites (at least by seeding) in three of the four games were sent home early. The combined winning margin of the four games was twenty points, with two of them decided by the very last made shot of the game.
Even Cinderella, in the form of the 11-seed Dayton Flyers, was able to keep her glass slippers on long enough to earn the respect of a nation.
My bracket has been busted for a week now, and so on Saturday I found myself rooting for 11-seed Dayton to knock off 1-seed Florida in the opening game of the weekend. Despite a valiant effort, the clock eventually struck midnight on the Flyers and their magical run, and Florida extended their winning streak to thirty games.
You read that right. Florida has won thirty games in a row, a streak that goes all the way back to December 02, 2013. The last time that Florida lost, we were still eating leftover turkey from Thanksgiving. The Gators, led by four seniors that had seen the previous three years end in Elite Eight losses, manhandled Dayton and finally earned the right to play in the Final Four.
In the evening game, 1-seed Arizona and 2-seed Wisconsin (the only region to see the top two seeds advance to the Elite Eight) played an extremely tight game, in which overtime was needed to decide the contest. In fact, during the last twelve minutes of regulation and the entire five minutes of the overtime period, neither team ever had a lead of more than three points.
When the horn sounded, Wisconsin had finally found themselves in the Final Four for the first time during their 13-year streak of tournament appearances.
Sunday’s doubleheader began with the team that America had been swooning over for the last few weeks, 4-seed Michigan State, taking on a 7-seed Connecticut team that nobody can quite figure out. Led by senior guard—that’s right, a star player that stayed in school!—Shabazz Napier, UConn’s backcourt of Napier and Ryan Boatright aggressively pestered the Spartan guards into 11 of the team’s 16 turnovers, while the Huskies sealed the game by making 21 of their 22 free throw opportunities.
UConn, a program that has won three national championships in the past fifteen years, became only the second 7-seed to ever reach the Final Four. With Napier emerging as this tournament’s breakout player, comparisons between him and Kemba Walker (another UConn guard who led the 2011 Huskies to the national championship) are popping up everywhere. Napier’s squad, not unlike Walker’s UConn team, which needed to win the Big East tournament to even get into the Big Dance, lost by 33 points to Louisville just over three weeks ago. Today, after knocking off 2-seed Villanova, 3-seed Iowa State, and 4-seed Michigan State, these Huskies feel like they have just as much of a chance to win the whole thing as any other program remaining.
The last game of the weekend pitted two power programs against each other, in the form of 2-seed Michigan and 8-seed Kentucky. The Wildcats and their starting five of one-and-done freshmen outmuscled the undersized Wolverines, limiting their second-chance opportunities and keeping the game close throughout. Almost as a summation of the entire weekend’s games, a statement to how close each of these contests were, Kentucky’s Aaron Harrison found himself with the ball in a tie game with less than three seconds left.
Harrison rose up, Michigan’s Caris LeVert extending an arm in what appeared to be excellent defense, and fired a three-point shot from NBA range to win the game. The shot went in, and the production line of future NBA lottery picks that is Kentucky basketball rounded out the Final Four.
Today there are only four teams still alive in the 2014 NCAA tournament, and despite the presence of a 7-seed and an 8-seed, the remaining programs are all the usual suspects. On Saturday, 2-seed Wisconsin will play 8-seed Kentucky and 1-seed Florida will play 7-seed Connecticut. The winners of each game will face off two days later, on April 7th, for the championship.
We get three more games, and each should prove to be interesting. 2-seed Wisconsin will attempt to methodically work the ball around to find open three-point looks, while 8-seed Kentucky will use their glamorous recruiting class to “out-athlete” the Badgers. On the other side of the bracket, 1-seed Florida will use their large bodies and the sure hands of Scottie Wilbekin to keep things rolling, while 7-seed Connecticut will place their championship dreams on the broad shoulders of Shabazz Napier. Don’t think that UConn will be intimidated by Florida either. Remember the thirty-game winning streak that the Gators are on? The last team to beat them, way back on December 02, 2013 – the Connecticut Huskies.
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