I feel betrayed. It happens every year around this time, but the hurt is worse this year. The Final Four begins tomorrow night, the culmination of the most exciting three-week period of the year.
To paraphrase Dane Cook, there's only one Final Four, but this year there are four final ones. For the first time in history all four top seeds have reached the summit of the college basketball mountain.
This is the way it's supposed to be. The best four teams all year are the last four standing. Any lover of college basketball, such as myself, should love this. Yet something doesn't feel right. With no Miami University or University of Cincinnati in, I have no hometown team to support. With Duke University and the University of Kentucky watching from home, there's no team to hate.
Every team left has that tiny number one next to their name, so there's no real underdog. The University of Memphis may play in a mid-major conference, Conference USA, but with one of the best freshmen classes and a coach who has reached the Final Four twice before, they hardly qualify as an underdog.
It was this vacuum of emotion, this arena of apathy, which Stephen Curry and Davidson University were supposed to fill. Every tournament has its own David and Goliath story, but no other team has had the name "DAVID" as the abbreviation for its school on the CBS scoreboard. Every Cinderella team has an obvious flaw.
Looking back, even George Mason University's Final Four run looks a bit lack luster. Sure they beat number one seeded University of Connecticut, but UConn only beat the University of Kentucky (No. 8 seed) by four and took overtime to beat the University of Washington (No. 5).
Davidson, on the other hand, scored 73 points against the University of Wisconsin. Only one other team all year scored more than that against the Badgers; Marquette University scored 81 December 18. Sure Davidson seemed to lack a consistent second scorer, but Curry was so good, and the team played such tough defense, that hardly seemed to matter.
The death kiss of any Cinderella is the media bandwagon. Save for Woody Paige, Davidson's bandwagon was noticeably empty. Beat Gonzaga University? Nice, but Georgetown University is just too good. Halt the Hoyas run? Well they're vulnerable when Roy Hibbert gets into foul trouble.
Besides, Wisconsin has the best defense in the country. Whoop Wisconsin? Well the University of Kansas is the number one seed for a reason. Plus, they play the best perimeter defense in the country. Davidson got no love from the underdog-obsessed media.
I was seduced by Cinderella. I fell hard for the pure jump shot of a 20-year-old kid that could easily pass for 12. I was wooed by the university that paid for any of its 1,700 students to attend the Sweet 16 battle with the Badgers.
They had enough good karma they could afford to give some to Earl and still have more than any other team in the tournament.
Unfortunately, karma couldn't set picks to give Stephen Curry an open look, and it couldn't guide in a wildly off-balance three-point prayer.
So we are left with what will likely be one of the most competitive Final Four's in recent memory, full of its own compelling sub plots (Roy Williams vs. Kansas, John Calipari back in the Final Four with a 37-win team).
Yet I can't shake the feeling that the tip-offs for these three final games are all scheduled for 12:01 a.m. A small school in North Carolina made the Elite 8, and all we got was a lousy slipper.
