Howland, Bruins have Unfinished Business in Final Four
Ben Howland has coached the UCLA Bruins into their NCAA Tournament Final Four game against the Florida Gators. At UCLA since 2003, Howland guided the Bruins to the National Championship last year, where the they were soundly defeated by the same Florida Gators team.
Saturday’s rematch is one of the most overstressed storylines of the Tournament thus far. The Bruins were humiliated on the national stage and want revenge, while the Gators seek to repeat and secure their place in college hoops history. I’m sure you understand the implications by now.
I pick UCLA to take this one. Last year, if you remember, the Bruins had a couple of close ones en route to the Final Four. They barely hung on to beat Alabama, and forced Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison into a tearful temper tantrum after overcoming a 17-point deficit in the Sweet Sixteen. They also had Jordan Farmar, who if I remember correctly, was no help at all in the champ’s game.
This year they are older and wiser. Even if the Bruins can’t pull off the victory, it ought to be a closer game. If you got NCAA Tournament tickets to this one at StubHub.com, consider yourself very lucky.
Will the Champs Game be Compelling?
Most of the writers on ESPN.com have chosen Florida as their favorite to win the National Championship of the 2007 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The Gators are the defending champions, and will be taking on UCLA on Saturday in the Final Four.
Because there are only four teams left, the possibilities are limited for a championship game. If you’re like me, and thought the Oregon Ducks and Memphis Tigers would be in the Final, then these games don’t matter in your bracket pool. All you can hope for is a good game, and wait until next year to win back your money.
So which combination would be the best for a good Final? The Final Four games both have their storylines. The Bruins are trying to get revenge in a rematch of the 2006 champ’s game. And two true centers, Oden and Hibbert, will battle in the Ohio State-Georgetown game.
The Finals, whoever plays, will probably lack as good of a storyline as the two games on Saturday. For me, though, Florida-Ohio State sounds like a good game to watch. If Oden can handle Hibbert on Saturday, then he might have a tougher time against the Gators’ duo of big men, Joakim Noah, and Al Horford.
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Final Four’s Matta Recruits, Chews Gum at Same Time.
The NCAA Tournament’s Final Four will play this Saturday, pitting four of the best college basketball coaches in the nation against one another. Ben Howland of UCLA will try to take revenge on Billy Donovan of Florida, while John Thompson III of Georgetown will try to step out from his father’s shadow by defeating Thad Matta of Ohio State.
Of the final remaining coaches, perhaps none will get more attention than Thad Matta. The Buckeyes’ head coach has been to the Elite Eight before with Xavier, and has plenty of experience winning in the Tournament. Known for his great recruiting, Matta has assembled the so-called “Thad Five,” a freshman class that includes Wooden Award finalist Greg Oden, as well as Mike Conley, David Lighty, Daequan Cook and Othello Hunter.
What people will focus on more than anything is Matta’s superstitions. Most prominent among his routines is his systematic and particular tradition of chewing gum during games. Obviously he never had ninth grade P.E. with Coach Pultony of Jesuit High School in Carmichael, California, because he would have learned, right then and there, that “chewing gum and dress shoes are never allowed in the basketball gymnasium!”
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Georgetown Coach new to Final Four
The Final Four of the NCAA Tournament this weekend will pit some of the greatest players in college basketball against one another, but it will also be a battle between four great coaches. Florida, Georgetown, UCLA and Ohio State have all reached this milestone achievement, but some of the coaches you’ll see this weekend have been here before.
It seems that clearly the weakest coach of the four remaining is Georgetown’s John Thompson III. JT3 has only been with the Hoyas program for a couple of years after coaching at Princeton, where he also played when he was in college. He has instituted the Princeton style of offence at Georgetown with great success.
You can debate whether he was the one who “turned around” the program at Georgetown or not, but the fact remains that he was nearly in the Elite Eight last year, and now finds himself in the Final Four.
Of course, being a Thompson at Georgetown tends to make things run a bit more smoothly, and he admittedly gets help with coaching the program from his legendary father. Unlike the other coaches, Billy Donovan, Thad Matta and Ben Howland, John Thompson III has never been to even the Elite Eight before. If you wanted to see JT3’s Final Four debut, then StubHub.com would have been your source for those great NCAA Tournament tickets
Good Guy Noah More in Final Four
Public opinion seems to have turned on Joakim Noah. The darling boy of the NCAA Basketball Tournament last year, Noah is now the most overexposed and over criticized player in the NCAA.
It’s easy to make fun of Noah. His hair is as ridiculous are his name, and perhaps as ridiculous as some of the things he’s done this season. He takes swings at cheerleaders, gnashes his teeth and says some pretty stupid stuff, but that could be said of a lot of people in the NCAA, and he was certainly the same kind of personality last year. The one thing that chanced was success.
After Noah and the Florida Gators won a championship, the world as Noah knew it changed. He could have probably gotten a decent NBA contract after last season, but he chose another year of learning about success the hard way. Every visiting arena seems focused on insulting him. His critics bring up his falling stats at every turn, and even if he has a good game or finds he’s in the Final Four again, nobody is satisfied.
Noah went from a nice page one photo opportunity to a guy who pisses everybody off just by walking into the room. People who buy NCAA Tournament tickets to his Final Four game will get to see Joakim Noah the bad guy. Check out StubHub.com for those tickets.
Battle of the Ages in Final Four
When Georgetown and Ohio State meet in Saturday’s Final Four game, one of the most anticipated match up battles of the NCAA Tournament will play out between the Buckeyes’ Greg Oden and the Hoyas’ Roy Hibbert.
The battle-within-the-battle of these two classic centers is one that probably hasn’t been seen since Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon played against each other in the legendary final game of 1984. Patrick Ewing, Jr. plays for Georgetown now, but Hibbert will be the one getting all of the attention this Saturday. The task before him is to guard Greg Oden, one of the finalists for the Wooden Award.
On paper, you might think that Hibbert has the edge. As listed, he is two inches taller than Oden and is a Junior with plenty more experience in big college games. However, I think Oden has the edge. Oden no doubt would have been playing in the NBA this year if the NBA rule about drafting high school players hadn’t been enacted.
Pick your pony and get you NCAA Tournament tickets to see who will win this battle for the ages. Whether you want Georgetown or Ohio State, this game is sure to be entertaining. Get tickets to the game at StubHub.com so you can give you first-hand account of the Battle of the Big Men at the water cooler on Monday.
Obvious Final Four Perhaps not so Disappointing
According to Pat Forde, ESPN’s Tournament Challenge has 161,869 tournament brackets that successfully picked the Final Four of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament this year. Congratulations, you unimaginative, dreamless realists who have clearly been beaten by the world into your current conformed and contrived mentality. Shame!
The combination of Florida (# 1 seed), UCLA, (#2), Georgetown (#2) and Ohio State (#1) is a Final Four most grandmothers and Europeans could have picked after considering the options as they were being written down. I know you did!
All the rest of us sports geniuses who knew 2007 was the year of the A&Ms (Florida, Texas Corpus Christi and Texas) are left with our bitterness. This year’s tourney is stupid.
But perhaps I am too quick to judge. The NCAA Tournament didn’t have a Cinderella story, but does it really have to for it to be a good tournament? Like I’m sure a lot of you out there, I like picking upsets and underdogs out of spite and for the chance to brag about having seen the upsets coming. Both spite and bragging was achieved for me in the first round when Duke lost.
Plus, upsets are great for those of us who don’t follow a contending team. But this year was a good one if your team was good all season long. It’s just dandy when a nobody team suddenly gets good in the NCAAs, but it bites the big one even worse when your top ranked program has one bad game and the tourney is over before it even began.
So though NCAA Tournament tickets this year didn’t provide fans with many upsets and no Cinderella, this tourney was a pretty good one for some, and could be rather lucrative for everybody out there who chokes up on the bat, goes for par, stops on a yellow, and gets their sports tickets at StubHub.com, the safe bet for great seats.
Bruins out for Revenge in Final Four
UCLA has a chance to get revenge on Florida in the Final Four of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament this weekend. The Gators crushed the Bruins in last years Final, winning the championship and, presumably, getting all of the chicks who dig championship winners.
The No. 1 seeded Florida Gators and the No. 2 seeded UCLA Bruins have many of the same starting players meeting again, but almost every analyst sees this game coming down to the wire. UCLA has one more year of experience under its belt, and the Gators have the added pressure of trying to repeat.
Said Oregon Coach Ernie Kent, “I think this year’s UCLA team is probably tougher mentally because they’ve been through the grind a second time now. They’ve been through a much more grueling Pac-10 conference that has gotten them tougher mentally as well. … UCLA is a much better basketball team this year than they were last year.”
If you think, like most people, that this might be one of the most riveting games of the tourney this year, then you ought to get NCAA Tournament tickets to see it at your source for the most vengeful basketball tickets, StubHub.com.
Elite Eight Games Slip Away from Kansas, Oregon
The Final Four are set in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament after a thrilling weekend of Elite Eight games. Saturday pitted Memphis with Ohio State, and UCLA against Kansas.
The Buckeyes and Bruins advanced to the Final Four first, and awaited the winners of the Sunday games, not knowing for whom they should root on to victory. The “worst” team still alive at that point was #3 Oregon. No matter who won on Sunday, the Buckeyes and Bruins were looking at a tough match up in the second-to-last round of the tourney.
Memphis was looking like they would have a real shot at the Final Four, but Ohio State separated themselves from the Tigers in the last eight minutes. Memphis went on two scoring droughts that lasted multiple minutes in the last half, allowing the Buckeyes to win one comfortably, for once.
UCLA and Kansas battled in a very similar way. The Jayhawks kept the game very close in the first half, but Aaron Afflalo and the Bruins ran away in the second, sending the top seeded Kansas team back home after a great season.
There still might be time to get some NCAA Tournament tickets to the Final Four next weekend. Check out StubHub.com if you want to find some great seats to what is sure to be a hard-fought Final Four.
Florida, Georgetown Advance to Final Four
Florida beat Oregon and Georgetown beat North Carolina in the Sunday games of the Elite Eight of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The Gators and Hoyas will advance to play UCLA and Ohio State, respectively, in the final Four next weekend.
Florida dropped Oregon in the second half of their game on Saturday. The Ducks kept things interesting throughout the game, but couldn’t close on the Gators in the second half of play when Florida took an 8 point lead with about 10 minutes remaining.
Georgetown overcame a 10 point deficit in the closing minutes of regulation against UNC. Once in overtime, the Tar Heels went cold, scoring their first field goal with just over seven seconds remaining to play. The Hoyas and 7’2’’ center Roy Hibbert will face Ohio State and their 7’ center Greg Oden.
The games are all set now for a Final Four that features three No. 1 seeds and a No. 2. If you were part of the selection committee, bravo. If you like picking underdogs in your office bracket pool, you might as well start complaining about the boringness of a tourney with no Cinderella plotline and predictable, lack-luster games.
The Final Four is one of the strongest in the past decade, so if you would like to see it live next weekend, you ought to hurry in getting your NCAA Tournament tickets at StubHub.com before they’re snagged by other hoops fans.