Monday, March 29, 2010

Four From Sixty-Four

And this is rapidly turning into the most interesting NCAA men's tourney in years.  The Final Four is now set:  Duke, West Virginia, Michigan State, and...Butler?!?!  SI's Luke Wynn breaks down victors.
We have our Final Four, each team playing its own role: Butler, the fairy-tale townie; Michigan State, the battered overachiever; West Virginia, the East Coast bully; and Duke, the headlining villain. This is the most unlikely of quartets to reach Indy, even though each team was in the top 11 of the preseason Associated Press poll. There were widely held reasons for them all not to make it to Lucas Oil Stadium. The Bulldogs were too meekly mid-major to beat Syracuse or Kansas State in the West. The Spartans stumbled through the Big Ten backstretch, and were without their floor general in the Midwest Region of Death. The Mountaineers weren’t rich enough in NBA talent to dance with John Wall & Co. in the East. The Blue Devils were, well, the Blue Devils of the past five NCAA tournaments — regular-season lions, postseason lambs.

All of those reasons, of course, were wrong.
Wynn has WVU edging out Duke to take on Butler after its narrow victory over the Spartans for the Championship game next Monday night.  Me?  I wouldn't count the Blue Devils out, but next Saturday is going to be outright impressive.

No comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails