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.


 

Permalink - Posted in General on March 27, 2007 - Post a comment

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.    

Permalink - Posted in General on March 27, 2007 - Post a comment