Monday night will put the exclamation point on what has been one of the most exciting and unpredictable NCAA college basketball tournaments I've ever had the pleasure of watching.
Sure, there's always a good Cinderella story or two, but I think it's safe to say no one really saw this one coming. And that's the beauty of the whole thing; you might convince yourself you know who's going to win the whole tournament, and then your team goes and loses their second game.
For those who missed Saturday night's games, here is a quick recap of the events:
Florida 73, George Mason 58
The Florida Gators came out firing, and they never let George Mason catch up. The game was controlled by sheer physical domination from the Gators, who had a visibly larger and longer side.
The game looked salvageable at halftime for the Pioneers, but Florida did everything it could to make sure Cinderella knew she wasn't welcome at the ball. As Florida forward Corey Brewer eloquently put it, "We kissed Cinderella, put her back in her pumpkin, sent her home to her stepmom and stepsisters." You can't make stuff like that up.
UCLA 59, LSU 45
The Bruins did a pretty ugly job of dispatching the red-hot Tigers before they had a chance to regroup. UCLA won the defensive battle and made LSU's attack look pathetic in the process. The low score was a telling sign of the importance defense played in the game, as UCLA willed its way into a shot at a twelfth national title.
The games were a little bit ugly and uneven, but also well worth watching. Not every game is going to thrill fans with NBA scoring or the next Michael Jordan, but so much of what makes the tournament exciting is its unpredictability.
Regardless of the seeding, George Mason was just as capable of winning last night's game as Florida was. And no matter what you heard on Friday's "College GameNight," Saturday just happened to be the Gators' and the Bruins' time to shine, not the Tigers' or the Pioneers'.
Not a single ESPN analyst picked more than one of the teams that made it to the Final Four, and most of them didn't even get one.
In ESPN's online "Tournament Challenge" competition -- where my bracket has been sitting idly at the bottom of the standings since the first round of games -- 1.5 million people submitted three million bracket predictions. Fittingly, only four people correctly predicted the remaining teams in the Final Four. Not one of the teams that made it carried a "1" seed.
While all of that might sound wildly unpredictable, those facts are what made it a perfectly normal Final Four. First seeds almost never win the tournament, and sometimes it seems like picking a game based on the dominance of a mascot or an affinity for a uniform color is more reliable than actually knowing anything about college basketball. This is one of the main reasons that March Madness is more fun to watch than, say, a four-game sweep of the World Series.
An ESPN "SportsNation" internet poll I stumbled onto yesterday asked which April sporting event fans most looked forward to: MLB opening day, The Masters, the Final Four or the NFL Draft. I'm no less a football fan than any other self-respecting American, but I was surprised when looked at the results.
In Ohio, Pennsylvania, North and South Dakota and Minnesota, the NFL Draft was the most highly anticipated event. While not impossible to believe, that does sound a little bizarre considering the Draft isn't even a game or competition, and we're two months removed from a football game.
To be fair, 40 of the remaining states went with the more immediate Final Four. That outlook was more in line with my expectations. I don't understand how watching Reggie Bush pose for the media in his new Texans jersey could possibly be more exciting than watching LSU knock off Duke, or UCLA come back to beat Adam Morrison.
If Saturday night was any indication, Monday night's match-up between UCLA and Florida could be a forgettable basketball game. Luckily, there are plenty of exciting sporting events to look forward to in April.
