It seems everyone – from seasoned sports analysts to President Obama, a self-proclaimed expert – failed to pick a single team that ended up in the Final Four, let alone picking Duke or Butler to win the championship.
This should finally disabuse all of us of the rational expectation that the most talented team will win. For, more than any other sporting event, the NCAA tournament seems susceptible to the triumph of emotion over talent. What else explains Duke and Butler…?
(Duke tops Butler to win NCAA championship, The iPINIONS Journal, April 6, 2010)
Well it’s déjà vu all over again. Because, just like last year, I don’t know of a single person who picked the four teams that ended up in this year’s Final Four. Not to mention picking Butler to repeat its fairytale run to make it all the way to the championship game for the second-consecutive year, playing UConn for the title last night.
In fact, never before in the history of “the big dance” – aka the NCAA Division I basketball tournament – have so many Cinderella teams made it past the midnight hour.
Unfortunately, Butler and UConn appeared to have expended all of their good play eliminating the top seeds in their respective division (including North Carolina – my pick to win it all) on their way to this championship game.
Because their shoddy play – which looked and scored more like football than basketball – made it clear why they were considered such long shots. Hell, for a five-minute stretch during the first half neither team could buy a basket, which is why the first half ended with Butler on top with an embarrassingly low score of 22-19.
And things did not get much better in the second half; in fact, Butler ended the game having hit only 12 of 64 shots (18.8 percent), giving it the dubious distinction of scoring the lowest number of points in the modern history of the NCAA championship. This game wasn’t just bad, it was incomprehensibly boring!
That said, there’s no denying the miraculous play that won both teams tickets to the final dance. It wasn’t pretty but UConn topped Butler to win this year’s championship 53-41.
NOTE: One can usually see the potential of a few players in this championship game to make it as stars in the NBA. But the run these two teams had this year was such a fluke that I’d be surprised if a single player on the court last night makes it….
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Duke tops Butler…