And our little tournament has reached its conclusion with Jim Calhoun and the UConn Huskies winning yet another tournament championship. As always, the Huskies relied on the support of their great fans to push them, this time a bit more directly than others. But let us take a look back through this tournament to see what stands out:
1) No Cinderellas: Aside from East #6 Notre Dame and South #5 Maryland, all of the Sweet Sixteen teams were top-4 seeds, meaning most of you agreed with my seeding, which is good, because I’m very smart.
2) Lol Cuse: Syracuse continued their history of embarrassing losses to double-digit seeds with a first-round loss to East #14 Iowa State.
3) Stars Win: Every Elite Eight team had at least one Hall of Famer or future Hall of Famer, and in most non-UConn match ups, the team with the best player won.
So who did I miss? Any teams you thought should have been represented? Contact me by email at peter@adimeback.com or on Twitter @PKBard. I’d love to hear from you even if you’re just a college basketball dork so I don’t have to talk to myself in the car anymore. Thanks for voting everyone!
-Peter “Bruce” Bard
I suppose it’s no surprise the Huskies won. And in fairness, I think we may have had more NBA-ers than any other team.
This was interesting and fun, Peter, and took some of us back in memory to many of the players we’ve watched for over forty years (I still can’t believe there was no Ernie D!) It was obviously a labor of love on your part. Thanks to you for a great job and to ADB for putting it on.