2008 Woodie Awards
Historic Final Four may end in boring finish
Eric Wormus
Issue date: 4/4/08 Section: Sports
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.
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.
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