Heard in the Cheap Seats

A few days ago, like many others, I was getting ready to write a post about how this was the greatest Final Four in tournament history. The numbers support that assertion. For starters, this is the first Final Four with four number 1 seeds. But the numbers don’t stop there. The combined record of these teams was 141-9 going into last night’s games–you guessed it, the best in tournament history. And perhaps most impressively, these teams are not the typical up-and-comers that permeate the tourney. No, these teams have 17 national championships and 48 trips to the Final Four combined. These are basketball juggernauts.  I’m glad I never got around to writing that post because last night’s games did not live up to the hype.

So what did we learn last night? We learned what I suspected since UNC struggled to beat Duke at the end of the regular season–the Tar Heels do not have the pure scorers needed to get past a team like Kansas. The Achilles Heel (pun intended) of UNC turned out to be its half court offense. Kansas had the athleticism to keep pace with UNC and force them in to a half-court offense. The result? An offense that looked lost and reverted to playing a game of one-on-one every time down the court. Sounds strange that a team averaging close to 100 ppg in the tournament could be doomed by their offensive inabilities–but that was exactly the case. Of course, their apparent disregard of defense didn’t help matters.

But hey, I’m not complaining, I have Kansas winning it all in my bracket.

On the other side of the bracket, we learned two things we should have known all along.

First, decades of college dominance amounts to squat once game time rolls around. Analysts, experts, commentators…you name it, all fell into the trap of giving UCLA an edge simply because they are the Blue and Gold. Well, John Wooden be damned, but UCLA teams of yesteryear had as much impact on the outcome of last night’s game as I did–zero.

The second thing we learned is guard play once again ruled the roost in the tournament. As has been proven time and time again, solid guard play is the key to making a long run in the NCAA tournament. Last night, the best guard in Derrick Rose, perhaps the best player in this tournament, carried Memphis to victory.

So with a thrilling finale, can this tournament still amount to the greatest Final Four in history? It depends on how you measure greatness. Going in, the thing that was so unique was that you really couldn’t consider any team winning an upset. There seemed to be unparalleled parity. If last night’s games proved anything, the parity was nothing more than a mirage.