The Final Four

It's Final Four Saturday, and this is our most unlikely Final 4 ever. I read that ESPN reported that out of 5.9 million brackets that were submitted through their bracket pool contest, only 1 selected this Final Four. I swear whoever did ever had to have submitted multiple brackets with all sorts of variations, be an honest to God psychic, or be a VCU student or alum. Because nobody could have seen VCU coming.

This is the first Final Four ever to have no number 1 or number 2 seeds in the field. The combined seed number of 26 is the highest ever. I think the Butler vs. VCU 8/11 semi-final is the highest seeded semi-final ever. 11 seed VCU ties 2006 George Mason and 1986 LSU as the lowest seeds to ever reach a Final 4.

Villanova, as an 8 seed, is the lowest seed to ever win it all, when they shocked Georgetown compliments of their virtually flawless second half in 1985.

Either Butler will have a chance to tie that record on Monday or VCU will get a chance to break it.

I don't know who to pick in that game. I think Butler is the more fundamentally sound team. They also have the big game experience of playing in the Final Four. However VCU seems to have more quickness, tempo, and explosiveness in their game, if they're able to break down the Butler defense.

Both teams are obviously hot though, and playing very well. Looking at it on-paper and even with the "predictable" intangibles I would say that Butler is going to win. But VCU has looked very good in the tournament. They dismantled a Purdue team that, while their play fell off late in the season, at one time looked as good as any team in the country. They held a double digit lead for most of the game against Kansas, who I considered a co-favorite with Ohio State to win it all going into the Tournament. So I'm not going to discount VCU. It's a big toss-up and I want to see that game.

In the other semi I'm going with UConn since they have been on a post-season tear. Kemba Walker was 4th in the country in scoring average. He's carried them even more in the post-season. I'll take that over a young Kentucky team.

So I think it will be UConn vs. ????? for the National Championship.

I think The Underdog (whoever it is) has a very good chance of winning it all. But like the rest of the tournament, who the hell knows what will really happen.

This season has been a season of super parity. Even as teams accumulated gaudy records it never seemed like there were any dominant teams all year. There were just a bunch of teams who played very well for stretches of the the season. So the National Champion will end up being that team that plays well last.