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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > March > 30
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Final Four features fearsome foursome
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It was bound to happen someday, and someday just arrived. The 2008 Final Four will offer the first congregation of just No. 1 seeds, and it’s not as if any of the four got hot in mid-February: These were the top four teams in both preseason men’s basketball polls (and also in the AJC’s rankings). These four, in sum, are really good.
How good? Last season’s Florida Gators were widely regarded as one of the greatest teams ever. Well, Florida finished 35-5. None of these Final Four qualifiers has lost more than three games. Memphis lost only to Tennessee; North Carolina to Maryland and Duke; UCLA to Texas, Southern Cal and Washington; Kansas to Kansas State, Texas and Oklahoma State.
Aggregate record of this Final Four: 143-9.
Average NCAA tournament margin of victory for these four teams: 18.5 points.
So fearsome has this foursome been that it has rendered this Big Dance a relative bore. If not for Davidson’s dead-on impersonation of George Mason, Rounds 3 and 4 would have been memorable for creating almost no March memories. Only two Week 2 games — the first (Xavier-West Virginia) and last (Kansas-Davidson) — were decided in the final minute.
This time a year ago we regarded the 2007 Final Four as a star-spangled collection of equals, but Florida proved peerless. It’s hard to imagine any of these four lapping the other three. None has done anything to make us believe it doesn’t belong: Each won its conference title (Kansas shared the Big 12 regular-season crown with Texas), and each won its league tournament. Not one has had even a two-game losing streak.
Only one has lost a game since Valentine’s Day, and the one — Memphis — hadn’t lost before that. There were no January slumps for this bunch, no moment of real crisis. All four started hot and kept going, and now they’re bound for San Antonio.
There’s no clear favorite, no possible Cinderella. There are only four superb teams, each skillfully coached, each brimming with talent. If there’s an edge in either semifinal, it’s a hairline thing. But somebody has to win, and the guess here is that Saturday’s winners will be UCLA and North Carolina.
UCLA came the closest of the four to elimination, needing clutch shots by Kevin Love and Darren Collison and a key non-call to nose past Texas A&M in Round 2, and UCLA also had the softest regional to negotiate. But the Bruins have something none of the other three possess: The bulk of their players have been to a Final Four. (Two, to be precise.)
The Bruins defend too well to be overrun by Memphis’ depth of talent the way Michigan State and Texas were, and playing in the Pac-10 has steeled UCLA. The Tigers have proved they can beat just about anybody from anywhere, but in Conference USA they simply weren’t asked to prove it twice weekly.
Carolina will beat Kansas because it has Tyler Hansbrough, who wants every big shot, and the Jayhawks, for all their blessings, still haven’t found such a man. They nearly squandered a late lead against Davidson because Brandon Rush kept passing instead of shooting. The Roy-Williams-versus-his-old-school subplot will be beaten to death, but the real story in the second semi will be the indomitable Psycho T.
As good as Carolina has been in this tournament, one tiny flaw continues to nip at its, uh, heels. Louisville made 52.7 percent of its shots in the East Regional final, and that’s an awfully high number. The belief here is that UCLA’s defense — the staple that powered these Bruins to those two Final Fours before Love arrived — will give them the tiniest of edges against Carolina in the final.
The schools that will convene in the Alamodome carry 17 national championships among them, the most ever for a Final Four quartet. What could be more fitting than the 2008 championship being taken by the school that has won more titles than any other? What could be more fitting in this season of few surprises than that least surprising of results — UCLA winning it all?
