Running NCAA men's tournament thread 2012

Don't get me wrong: That 1997 Arizona team is the biggest underdog to win a national title in the past 20 years for sure. You have to go back to Danny Manning's 1988 Kansas team, which was a No. 6 seed and not expected to be any kind of threat, for a similar surprise.

One thing that helped Kansas: It had a ridiculously easy slate to reach the Final Four: No. 11 Xavier, No. 14 Murray State, No. 7 Vanderbilt, No. 4 Kansas State.

 

And Kansas faced a team it was very familiar with in the final (Oklahoma).

KU had a tough semifinal opponent in Duke, but OU had just beaten the No. 1 team in the country (Zona) in the semis.

 

2006 Florida also had an easy road to the championship. Witness:

R1- Scrub team, gamed played in Jacksonville, FL
R2- Another scrub team, game played in Jacksonville, FL
Sweet 16- Georgetown, who was fairly decent
Elite 8- The incredibly flawed, 4-guard 'Nova team. Against Horford/Noah. Ha.
National semis- George Friggin Mason
Championship game- UC "Scoring 48 points a game is fun" LA

Duke and/or UCONN would've kicked the Gators straight through the uprights. But of course those two teams shat themselves before the Final Four.

 

If you will recall, and I confess I had to look it up, Arizona had to come from way behind just to escape an upset in the first round to 13-seed South Alabama, then lucked out when 12-seed College of Charleston knocked out Maryland ahead of the second round. It wasn't until the Kansas game that Zona really caught fire.

Anyway, my solution would be to do away with conference tournaments, seed every team 1 through 300-whatever, have a 256-team bracket (which would only add two more rounds to the tournament) with play-ins for the bottom feeders and let 'em have at it. If a 4-26 team somehow wins six or seven games to get to the Final Four, then so be it.

I do jest slightly, because that format wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being implemented, but I think it's an interesting idea.

 

That "incredibly flawed" Villanova team's biggest weakness may have been its Sweet 16 game against a very good Boston College team that required a draining overtime finish. Villanova was very, very good that year. Even its front court was better than advertised, as it included Jason Frasor and Dante Cunningham.

 

Kentucky will win the National Championship on April 2, 2012.
Kentucky Head Coach John Calipari will resign from the University of Kentucky in May of 2013.
Kentucky will be stripped of said National Championship sometime early in 2014.

A Calipari Tradition unlike any other.

 

Regardless of any Calipari indiscretions real or otherwise, this year's Kentucky team plays an outstanding brand of ball that's sadly lacking across much of the NCAA. If they win, they'd be a worthy champion. At least as far as product-on-the-floor goes.

 

If Kentucky doesn't win a National Title this year, it will be because of one person. John Calipari.

 

I don't follow Chef. Wouldn't Louisville, Ohio State or Kansas have something to do with it?

 

What they did to Baylor in the first half of that game was epic. I cannot remember seeing a team ranked that high looking so inferior in every aspect of the game in a long, long time.

Kentucky was toying with them after five minutes. It looked like the Hampton Y getting next game at Rucker Park on a Saturday afternoon in June and quickly realizing they were playing in another league.

 

Despite the fact that favorites who actually win the game straight-up in this round usually roll big-time, cannot shake my conviction that Pitino will give Worldwide Wes one helluva game.

 

I thought Stan Van Gundy said it best today in response to Gary Williams nonsense that Kentucky could beat an NBA team.

In essence, Van Gundy said (paraphrase) "nonsense" and his explanation hit the nail on the head...

(paraphrase to an extent) "Kentucky has a good team, but they have maybe four NBA players. Any team they play has 13 NBA players, that's the end of the discussion."