"The Craziest Final Four Ever" or "If You Don't Have an Animal Mascot, You Can't Play!!"

After this weekend's quagmire of an Elite Eight, we end up with a Final Four consisting of 3-Seed Connecticut, 4-Seed Kentucky, 8-Seed Butler, and 11-Seed Virginia Commonwealth. Let's break this down:

University of Connecticut: This team placed ninth in the Big East, with a conference record of 9-9. However, they spent the majority of the season taking down teams bigger and scarier than them: Michigan State, their Final Four match-up Kentucky, Texas, then they wipe out all the big names in the conference in their "Five Days of Winning" Big East Championship. They made their way into the tournament and beat Bucknell, Cincinnati, San Diego State, and Arizona.....pretty weak, the average of the seeds they have beaten in this tournament is 6.75. On the other hand, I did pick them to make it to the Final Four, so basically I am amazing and part of only 26% of the entries on Espn to have even one Final Four right. Boo-Yah!

University of Kentucky: What can I say? Second in the SEC East behind Florida, won the SEC Tournament. They've beaten alot of good teams in their conference and lost to the likes of Arkansas, Ole Miss, and those punk ass bitches Vanderbilt (I hate Vandy for no reason, just do, maybe it's the fugly uniforms). The only surprise about Kentucky making it to the Final Four is that they beat Ohio State on the way, and Ohio State was looking dominant. The average seed of the teams they played was 5.5.

Butler University: Butler....How the hell did they do this again? Can they do it without Matt Howard in the future? Why is their coach so young? These questions don't matter because these Black Clad Bulldogs have made it to the Final Four for the second straight year. They won the Horizon League and the tournament, although they only had to play two games to do so, against Cleveland St. and Milwaukee, hardly the Murderer's Row that UConn faced. They've lost to the likes of Evansville and (even more hilarious) Youngstown State (2-16 in the Horizon). But somehow they gathered the gumption to take down Pitt, Wisconsin, and Florida, no small feat. Their average seed played is 4, easily the hardest of the four remaining teams.

Virginia Commonwealth University: How bout this bullshit? VCU somehow squeezed their way into this tournament and are now just laying down a wasteland of sad teams. These guys came in fourth (FOURTH!!!!) in the Colonial League behind George Mason (8-seed), Old Dominion (9-seed), and Hofstra (participating in the College Basketball Invitational, a tournament held for teams that don't make the NCAA Tourney or the NIT. This is a tournament I did not know existed until I was doing research for this post.). Hofstra finished two games ahead of VCU in the league. VCU's season involved losing to such up and coming teams as: South Florida in OT, UAB, Georgia State, Northeastern (Yes that is a real team), and Drexel. While they beat:....Old Dominion once, Hofstra......., George Mason in the Colonial Tournament. But regardless of how the hell this team got into the tournament, they have leveled the teams they've been beating, USC by thirteen in the play-in game, Georgetown by eighteen, Purdue by eighteen, FSU was a close one point success in OT, but then they follow it up by beating Kansas by ten! This team could do anything: Lost to Butler by twenty five, win the whole thing, roast a real Ram as a sacrifice to the NCAA god for the sixth time in three weeks. Average Seed of their opponents: 5.17.

I think that I have learned from this tournament: 1)If you feel, while you are filling out your bracket, completely uneasy with every one of your picks, you are probably gonna have a terrible bracket. 2) If all of the experts say that there are gonna be a ton of upsets but pick all top three seeded teams to go to the Final Four, then they are just as uneasy as the rest of us and are going safe. 3) All of us should have done as the experts say and not as the experts do (the old line rolled out by parents when their teenagers find out that they used to smoke as teenagers) because when no one knows how to pick, there was certainly be some sort of mayhem going on.

I'd like to end this column with a little bit of criticism. Charles Barkley, everyone's favorite word vomiting TV basketball analyst for TNT, has basically been ripping the Big East all season, something I can appreciate, being a Big Ten man. He has often referred to them as the "Big Least." Apparently Jim Calhoun (UConn coach took offense to this because he had this to say, ""I've heard people call us the 'Big Least'. The large gentleman (Barkley) that called us that. The ninth-place team in the Big Least is now in the Final Four"
Let me explain something to you, Calhoun, while I appreciate what your team has done to validate a small part of my bracket, you need to understand that a conference that has one of it's eleven tournament teams make it to the Final Four is no success. So join me Calhoun and let's further analyze what happened to the various Big East Teams: In the first round you go 7-4 (Terrible for a power conference with only 11-seed Marquette and 9-seed Villanova as the worse seed in their respective games). You lose 4-seed Louisville to 13 Morehead St. (Pitino is doing analyst work the next day on CBS), 6-Seed St. John's in a loss to 11 Gonzaga, 6-Seed Georgetown in a destiny-laced loss to 11 VCU, 9-Seed Villanova (year long choker) to 8 George Mason. The second round is even more brutal to the Big East going only 2-5 with their remaining seven teams: 1-seed Pitt loses to 8 Butler (my bracket subsequently becomes nothing more than a piece of paper with a bunch of scrapings on it), 2-Seed Notre Dame loses to 10 Florida St, 3-Seed Syracuse losing to fellow Big Easter 11 Marquette, 6-seed Cincinnati loses to 3 Uconn, 5-seed West Virginia loses to 4 Kentucky.
So, Jim, do you think a conference that gives us eleven tournament teams and only gets two of them to the Sweet Sixteen is something to be proud of? Which other conferences had two teams make it to the Sweet Sixteen? Well the Big Ten did with only seven teams in the tournament, the SEC did with only five tourney teams, the Mountain West did (The MOUNTAIN WEST!) with only three teams making the tournament, and even better, the ACC had only four teams in the field of 68 and three of them (UNC, Florida St., and Duke) made it to the Sweet Sixteen.
Basically, the Big East was a big old sucker of a conference this year. Tons of ranked teams but the team that wins the Big East tournament is the ninth seed in their conference and the only two teams of theirs to make the Sweet Sixteen were the ninth placed Huskies and the eleventh placed Marquette Golden Eagles. WOW, what an awesome fucking conference you got there Calhoun.
Not to discount UConn, though. They are a good team that got hot at the right time, and clearly have the ability to beat other good teams, so they could win just as much as the other three teams, but that does not mean that the Big East was anything amazing, they just have a ton of teams, and this was a wacky year for college basketball.

In summary, Crazy Final Four, Big East sucks.