March Madness
Come on, admit it. Almost there, there you go. You love March Madness. You might not even like basketball or college sports or sports in general for that matter. But you love March Madness. You love an event where it’s game after game day after day. You fill out your bracket, you place your bets and you lose hair over upsets that you picked that didn’t pan out and upsets that you never saw coming. Its three straight weekends of eating, drinking and watching a bunch of guys you never heard of. And you love it.
It really wasn’t a bad tournament although it wasn’t that “mad.” After the first weekend where the upsets were few and far between I sarcastically coined the term “Spring Sanity.” But where some people love seeing the big dogs go down I enjoyed seeing the top seeds succeeding. We got to see the best teams play round after round. The teams we followed all year and we got to follow them through the tournament. Therefore we got to see the best games. Not some underdog getting killed by a top seed in the Sweet Sixteen after a couple of upsets. But instead we got to see the top seeds continually go head to head and we saw some great games because of that.
Now time for some personal thoughts. The first really isn’t that important might I think it might improve the game. It is that coaches shouldn’t be allowed to call a timeout in the final minute. Everyone hates seeing that final 60 seconds drag on for 10 minutes. Plus it is so much more exciting when the game isn’t interrupted and the players play the game like they have the previous 39 minutes. I saw one game, don’t remember which one, where neither coach had any timeouts and the game just flowed furiously end to end. It was great. The intensity, tension and drama was running 100 miles per hour and nobody could stop it.
The second is that I beg with all my basketball soul that these young players don’t go to the NBA after one or two years. I want them to stay for their own sake and for my own sake. They go too early for the money when they are not ready and they are a bust. Stay, improve your skills and then go be twice the player and make the money that comes with being better. The NCAA is halfway their in requiring them to stay for one year, now just go ahead and make it two. And for my own sake I want them to stay. I want to see Kevin Durant, Greg Oden and Brandon Wright for another year being awesome players competing for national title. I don’t want to see them get drafted by a bad team where they are going to be a bad player and I never hear of them anymore. Entertain us for another year.
As for the Final Four, not bad. Florida, UCLA, Georgetown and Ohio State were all good teams and deserved to be there because they beat good teams to get there like Oregon, Kansas, North Carolina and Memphis. But all three games over the final weekend were cases of one team was just too good for the other. Georgetown couldn’t stay with Ohio State and for a second straight year UCLA didn’t have the firepower to match Florida.
The championship game was no exception. Florida simply had too much quality. They were older, more experienced had more chemistry and were just better than Ohio State. Oden did have a great however, he kept his side alive. But the rest of the team just couldn’t keep up. Conley, Lewis and Butler are all excellent players but Brewer, Green, Hodge, Humphrey and Richard were one step quicker and one play better the whole night.
What this Florida team has accomplished is simply incredible. In a day age where everybody leaves early, they not only won one championship but they all stayed and then one another for the first repeat since 1991/1992. The repeat just doesn’t happen anymore but these guys did it. They played with a passion and togetherness that I have rarely seen. The joy in their face when they were playing was amazing. You might not rank them up there with the great teams like UCLA or Kentucky from years past but you have to applaud their quality. As years go by, we will appreciate what they did even more because of the era they did it in.
It really wasn’t a bad tournament although it wasn’t that “mad.” After the first weekend where the upsets were few and far between I sarcastically coined the term “Spring Sanity.” But where some people love seeing the big dogs go down I enjoyed seeing the top seeds succeeding. We got to see the best teams play round after round. The teams we followed all year and we got to follow them through the tournament. Therefore we got to see the best games. Not some underdog getting killed by a top seed in the Sweet Sixteen after a couple of upsets. But instead we got to see the top seeds continually go head to head and we saw some great games because of that.
Now time for some personal thoughts. The first really isn’t that important might I think it might improve the game. It is that coaches shouldn’t be allowed to call a timeout in the final minute. Everyone hates seeing that final 60 seconds drag on for 10 minutes. Plus it is so much more exciting when the game isn’t interrupted and the players play the game like they have the previous 39 minutes. I saw one game, don’t remember which one, where neither coach had any timeouts and the game just flowed furiously end to end. It was great. The intensity, tension and drama was running 100 miles per hour and nobody could stop it.
The second is that I beg with all my basketball soul that these young players don’t go to the NBA after one or two years. I want them to stay for their own sake and for my own sake. They go too early for the money when they are not ready and they are a bust. Stay, improve your skills and then go be twice the player and make the money that comes with being better. The NCAA is halfway their in requiring them to stay for one year, now just go ahead and make it two. And for my own sake I want them to stay. I want to see Kevin Durant, Greg Oden and Brandon Wright for another year being awesome players competing for national title. I don’t want to see them get drafted by a bad team where they are going to be a bad player and I never hear of them anymore. Entertain us for another year.
As for the Final Four, not bad. Florida, UCLA, Georgetown and Ohio State were all good teams and deserved to be there because they beat good teams to get there like Oregon, Kansas, North Carolina and Memphis. But all three games over the final weekend were cases of one team was just too good for the other. Georgetown couldn’t stay with Ohio State and for a second straight year UCLA didn’t have the firepower to match Florida.
The championship game was no exception. Florida simply had too much quality. They were older, more experienced had more chemistry and were just better than Ohio State. Oden did have a great however, he kept his side alive. But the rest of the team just couldn’t keep up. Conley, Lewis and Butler are all excellent players but Brewer, Green, Hodge, Humphrey and Richard were one step quicker and one play better the whole night.
What this Florida team has accomplished is simply incredible. In a day age where everybody leaves early, they not only won one championship but they all stayed and then one another for the first repeat since 1991/1992. The repeat just doesn’t happen anymore but these guys did it. They played with a passion and togetherness that I have rarely seen. The joy in their face when they were playing was amazing. You might not rank them up there with the great teams like UCLA or Kentucky from years past but you have to applaud their quality. As years go by, we will appreciate what they did even more because of the era they did it in.
posted by William Allison @ 6:42 PM
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