Butler, Duke, West Virginia and Michigan State. Four basketball programs that have fought through adversity, relied on guts, raw talent and intelligence to power through this year's NCAA tournament to reach the Final Four platform in Indianapolis. They are schools that carry with them history and legacies. For Butler, it's the fact that their very own basketball arena was used in the movie Hoosiers, for Duke it's Coach K and the plethora of players that have made pit stops through Durham before reaching the NBA, for West Virginia....well...umm...okay, well...Bob Huggins used to coach Cincinnati when they had Kenyon Martin and Ruben Patterson, so there's that and Michigan State has Tom Izzo, who has by and large been the best coach in college basketball over the last fifteen years.
Great schools, right? Great matchups, yes? Well guess what, I didn't pick any of them to be in my Final Four. You know why? Because I'm just not smart enough to understand why some underdogs win and some lose. I'd like to think that I called the Kentucky loss (I said, over and over that the only way they'd go down is if they got down by more than 10 and panicked, which is exactly what they did, West Virginia's maturity down the stretch was just too overwhelming), but really, that was a total fucking fluke. I had those bastards going to the championship game anyways. The same with Ohio State, Syracuse and Villanova, all of whom bit the dust harder than a death metal band taking a swim in wet cement. Murray State winning? Nope. Cornell? Nope. I think perhaps what the problem really comes down to is that there are just too many goddamn teams. How am I supposed to keep track of every team in the field throughout an entire season? I have a hard enough time keeping up with the Buckeyes and the Big Ten.
You'll say, of course, that picking the tourney correctly comes down to luck anyways, and you'll proceed to tell me the story of some friend of a friend's girlfriend who picked the teams based solely on mascot cuteness and won five thousand bucks, but you and I both know that's a heap of bullshit, there has to be some math involved, right? I mean, Kentucky picking apart Cornell was not the end of a string of luck for the Ivy League underdogs, it was a vastly better team talent wise completely exploiting the other team's complete lack of talent. Kentucky would beat Cornell 100 times out of 100, I am convinced of this fact. I guess that's why the mid-seeded match ups are the hardest to pick. You can't pit a Murray State against a Duke and hope for an upset nearly as much as picking a Butler over a Syracuse. Of course, Northern Iowa and Ohio University negate this fact simply because they beat two amazing programs in Georgetown and Kansas, but really, you're going to tell me that Kansas and G'Town don't hold the majority of that responsibility? OU beats G'Town then plays Tennessee and gets creamed, Northern Iowa knocks out Kansas then goes ahead and gets beat by Michigan State.
Shrug...I'm ranting, I know this, there is no direct point and no real thesis here.
All I'm saying, really, is that next year, instead of doing a crash course in each team's stats and match up possibilities, I'm just going to make my picks based solely on the names of the high scorers on each team. Lord knows if I would have done that this year I would have had Lacedarius Dunn and Baylor going much further than the first round.
Enjoy the Final Four everyone, I'm calling a West Virginia and Michigan State championship, but don't quote me on that.
-Terrence Adams
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