The sports pundits are calling this the greatest Elite 8 round ever in the NCAA tournament. I don’t have the experience to argue with that, and certainly having all four games in play until the final seconds and three of the four go to overtime would be hard to top. Add in two of the overtime games only going to overtime after furious comebacks by the eventual victor (I’m still torn over which was more impressive, and am far from an impartial observer, but my vote still goes to Louisville because Arizona collapsed more than West Virginia did), and it would be hard to top. Certainly it tops the 1992 tourney, which included Duke’s memorable OT victory over UK and Michigan’s OT victory over Ohio State, but also a Cincinnati blowout of Memphis and Indiana blowout of UCLA.
The biggest loser of all is likely to be Tubby Smith. There’s a vocal and growing anti-Tubby contingent among UK fans, who like to point out that the only Final Four for Tubby was the 1998 title he won with Rick Pitino’s players. That Pitino returned to the Final Four before Tubby did will only make things worse for Tubby. The criticism really isn’t fair - UK played in three regional finals since 1998 (in 1999, 2003 and 2005), which is the same number Duke has played in, so they’ve certainly had some success. Plus, UK really overachieved this year with a team most thought was a year away. Tubby’s in an unenviable situation - his defense-driven style of play is just not as fun to watch as Pitino’s Bombinos.
As for the national semifinals, I suspect that they’re both too close to call, Louisville’s #4 and Michigan State’s #5 seeds notwithstanding. The Cards are simply not the same team that lost to Houston and got blown out by Memphis. They seem to have alargely recovered from the injury bug that plagued them earlier in the year, and the addition of the 2-3 zone has done wonders to make up for a thin bench and weakness to dribble penetration. On the other side of the bracket, UNC appears to be falling prey to the Roy Williams bug, and is playing just well enough to win (so far), and with Michigan State in its fourth Final Four in seven years, Tom Izzo needs to be ranked among the elite coaches. As I’ve noted before, I’ve been wrong every step of the way on these Cards: I thought they’d blow out Louisiana-Lafayette, and they won a squeaker. I thought they’d lose to georgia tech because I bought the ACC hype, and they won going away. I thought the UW game would be close, and it wasn’t, and thought the WVU game wouldn’t be close, and it was. So I have no idea. An Illini-Tarheel final would not surprise me, nor would a UofL-MSU final. Go Cards.
Final note: this year’s Final Four seeds total 11 (two #1s, a #4 and a #5). That’s the second-highest for the last ten years (2000 featured one #1, one #5 and two #8s - not surprisingly, the one seed (Michigan State) won). Indicative of either bad seeding or a lot of upsets.
