It’s loopy and strange and all kinds of backwards, but the best team left in the Final Four is UConn.  Does America really want to watch cinderella on cinderella crime?  Just how unlikely was this four-some?  How did we get here?

SCOTT JACOBS

This isn’t the Final Four you predicted.  It’s not the Final Four the bigwigs at CBS and Turner dreamed of.  When the casual fan knows more about the coaches of our last four remaining than the players, something is  a bit off.  When half the coaches have run as much scandal amok their programs as they have greatness you can’t help but raise an eyebrow.  When the other two coaches are so young that some people confuse them for players and maybe even interns, you know the whole system has been thrown upside down.

In one corner we have the heavyweights and the coaches riddled with sanctions and problems.  In the other, a pair of upstarts (one that was just here last year), the other a team most of America didn’t think should even get into the First Four.

But here they are. In the Final Four, a collective pairing so odd, it has more faces to it then Geico’s 300 campaigns simultaneously running together.  “In the 15 minutes it took to make this commercial gamblers could have saved hundreds by not betting a penny on this NCAA Tournament.” Seriously.  Now it’s Sexy Grandpa time.

Just kidding.

But this Final Four is real.  You can’t make this stuff up.  For the 2 people in ESPN’s Bracket Challenge out of 5.9 million that got their Final Four exact, I’m pretty sure they started drinking heavy before they filled it out.  Or maybe they knew nothing whatsoever about college hoops.

The people who do know a thing about college hoops know that these are not the best 4 teams. Not even close. UConn was 9th in the Big East (there’s 16 teams in the league), Kentucky was a relative afterthought this year after their Elite Eight team lost just about everybody.  Butler lost Gordon Hayward to the Utah Jazz and had to win their conference tournament just to confirm their spot. VCU, well we all know their story.

Let’s take a look at the Final AP Top 25, which came out right before the tourney pairings did.

09. UConn
11. Kentucky

This is what I wrote before the tourney, which in hindsight sounds kinda, sorta brilliant. Unfortunately I thought this would be the year a six seed might break through and win it all, not an EIGHT or ELEVEN!

“And that’s precisely what makes the Tournament so interesting every year.  It’s a crapshoot. This year more than ever, I could forsee a lower seed getting hot and shocking the masses all the way to that One Shining Moment.  But who?  Logic says teams in the top 15 are generally your target base for picking a champion.

That leaves: Ohio State, Kansas, Duke, Pitt, Notre Dame, San Diego State, North Carolina, Texas, UConn, BYU, Kentucky, Syracuse, Purdue, Louisville and Florida.  We’re talking 4 seeds and higher folks.”

Well, using that logic I was able to peg 50% of the Final Four’s possible participants.  That’s like picking almost 25% of the field and still missing two.

Going into the Tourney Butler wasn’t even good enough to garner 20 top 25 votes, and VCU wasn’t even in the conversation.

And now they’re playing each other for a trip to the National Championship. Houston, this whole thing’s confusing.

Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated tweeted yesterday: “Butler-VCU will rate very high. And Kentucky-Butler final will top last year’s numbers. Book it.”

But would it?  / Will it?

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And that’s exactly my feeling.  I don’t think America is ready for Cinderella on Cinderella crime.  Morehead State beating Louisville, that’s cool.  Richmond beating Vanderbilt. Cool.  Richmond playing Morehead State, that’s blah.  That’s not sexy.  That’s not fun.  There’s no selling point when you’re trying to spice up that matchup for the casual sports fan.

I’ve said this for years and I’ll re-iterate it.  We the sports watching public like numbers.  However biased or unfair they may potentially be, we love our rankings.  Rankings sell.  The Preseason Top 25 means diddly squat in basketball, but UConn can still say that it beat #2 Michigan State in November. So what if the Spartans turned out to be a joke! Which brings me back to Deitsch’s comments that “Butler-VCU will rate very high.”

No it won’t.  You know why?  Because 8 versus 11 isn’t sexy.  America isn’t in love with Butler, we just enjoy their grittiness.  That makes for a great movie, but when they’re the headliner act, well, that’s just plain unappealing.  Butler wins, but I’ve never watched one of their games and been entranced by their style of play.  They slug games out. They do what it takes and they never quit. But are their games hot sells if you take out the big programs they have to beat and replace them with no name ones?  No.

Admit it, casual sports fan X. You probably didn’t follow Butler at all this year after they quietly slipped out of the national rankings and out of our national conscience.  You may not even have followed them in their conference tourney. UW-Milwaukee?  Green Bay?  Those matchups aren’t sexy. That’s blue collar on blue collar basketball, and blue collar on blue collar basketball doesn’t sell.  If it did, CBS would show more games like BYU-San Diego State.  But instead of blue collar, we love our blue bloods. Sprinkle in that so called “team of destiny” and you’ve got yourself a matchup.

Which is why Monday’s title game is so intriguing.  We’re guaranteed blue blood versus blood collar.  The public will tune in. Kemba or Kentucky versus Butler or VCU?  That’s the classic David versus Goliath.  VCU’s sports radio station is so far under the radar that their website is on Wordpress (like us).  Kentucky’s almost looks like a regular station.  VCU hasn’t even added the radio call of their Elite Eight win to their radio website.  We’re talking night and day folks (though I advise you to listen to the Robby Robinson’’s call for FSU-VCU, it may send Gus-Johnson sized goosebumps through your body. Did he block it)?

We love feel good stories, but two feel good stories on one court just feels boring.  To the sports fan whose watched this tourney through and through (such as myself) this is an intriguing matchup:  Butler’s slug it out, wear you down, play good defense and do the little things style of play versus VCU’s bury you in threes, press you till you have no legs, and use the doubters to fuel one performance more impressive than the other approach.  Both teams have talent.  Butler has a stud guard in Shelvin Mack, who has proven to be one of the top 10 players in this tournament and whose NBA stock is rising quickly.  Matt Howard has done everything asked of him and then some.  VCU has Jamie Skeen and Joey Rodriguez and a host of other guys who have proven they can hold their own against anyone in the country.

But most of America doesn’t know this. Much of America probably doesn’t care.  The bigger story may be that three of the four schools in this Final Four may not be able to sell out their Final Four allotment of tickets to Houston (obviously Kentucky will).

But none of that matters, because most of these kids will go pro in something other than sports.  They don’t care about rankings.  They don’t care that their coaches are bigger commodities right now than their players (Shaka Smart and Brad Edwards).  None of that matters.

What matters is that they’re here.  That they overcame 6 conference losses in the CAA (VCU) and 5 in the Horizon (Butler).  Most fans probably don’t know what the CAA even stands for (Colonial Athletic Association) or that Drexel actually finished with more wins in conference than VCU.

VCU beat two BCS Conference schools in the regular season and one of those included a win over lowly Wake Forest.  In the tournament they’ve chalked up 5, including their latest and greatest triumph, an emphatic win over Kansas.

Cleveland State had the same record as Butler, both overall and in conference, but chances are you can’t name a single player on their team.  For that matter do you even know their school nickname? (Answer: Vikings).  But none of that matters.  Just like it doesn’t matter that Butler lost 3 games in a row back in January to Milwaukee, Valparaiso, and Youngstown State.

Jay Bilas summed it up by saying that in the middle of the season you wouldn’t have considered any of these Final Four teams Final Four caliber.

UConn had a stretch that began in late January in which they lost 7 of 11 games.  Kansas, the team now going home after VCU shocked them, lost 2 all regular season!

As for Kentucky, did anyone even mention them in Final Four talk the whole season?  After they won the SEC Tournament people took notice, but before then, they were afterthoughts to most hoops fans.

And that’s your Final Four. 1 from the First Four, 1 from Last year’s Final Four, 1 from last year’s N.I.T., and one that lost half it’s team to the NBA Draft the year before.

It’s goofy, it’s odd, and it even smells a little funky, but one of these teams is going to leave Houston a champion.

VCU?  The same team that finished 4th in the CAA, the champion of college hoops?  Yeah, it’s been one whacky tournament.  To say the least.

Graphic: Scott Jacobs

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