The tournament field has been cut down to four teams as the 5th seeded Michigan State Spartans, 5th seeded Butler Bulldogs, 2nd seeded West Virginia Mountaineers, and the number 1 seeded Duke Blue Devils all made it to Indianapolis, Indiana, the site of this years Final Four. Its only fitting that two number five seeds made it into the final four considering the balance of college basketball this year, where no team really was a dominant force. In fact, a 5th seeded team is guaranteed to make into the Men's College Basketball Championship game as Michigan State and Butler will face each other in one game, while Duke will play West Virginia in the other game.
Looking back this year's tournament lived up to its name March Madness. As we saw plenty of upsets and cinderellas well into the Elite Eight and still have a somewhat cinderella in the Final Four, Michigan State. Games of note that made a major impact on the tournament would have to be St. Marys defeating Villanova, Cornell thrashing Wisconsin and Temple, Murrey State last second shot against Vanderbilt, Ohio shutting down Georgetown, and Northern Iowa holding on against the number 1 overall seed Kansas. There are other games you can point to but these were the major upset games and no West Virginia beating Kentucky is not a major upset, reason: experience and West Virginia can shoot the ball with any team in the country.
My favorite game thus far would have to be one from Sunday, the 6th seeded Volunteers of Tennessee against 5th seeded Michigan State. If you missed this one, you missed an all-time great scoring a fair. Michigan State won 70-69, as you can tell by the score this game was back and forth with both teams having their largest leads under eight points.
Tennessee opened the game going 4 of 4 from downtown, but Michigan State did not slack in the shooting department either as they started the game with 6 of 8 from the field. Every time one team would make a 8-0 run, the other team would counter with a run of their own. The game saw over 10 lead changes and over 10 ties. It was a fast paced up and down game, thought would be in Tennessee's favor but it did not turn out that way. Michigan State was playing without one of its best players point guard Kalin Lucas, who led the team in scoring averaging almost 15 a game. Raymar Morgan's free throw with 1.8 seconds left put the Spartans up by one. The next free throw he missed on purpose and Tennessee rebounded it, called a timeout with 1.7 seconds left on the clock. Brian Williams in-bounded the ball to J.P. Prince who dribbled to mid-court, he fumbled the ball a bit before he launched it in the air, only to fall short of the basket.
The Final Four is set to bring us three more compelling games as all four teams have experience. I can't wait for this weekend to watch these games, should be nail-biters!
No comments:
Post a Comment