I got a late start this morning, and had to run some errands today, but I would be remiss if I didn’t post something to commemorate the wackiness in the Tampa subregional of the NCAA Tournament. They played four games yesterday in Tampa: the first two went into overtime, with Western Kentucky beating Drake on a last-second three and San Diego knocking off UConn the same way. Then Siena thumped Vanderbilt (Woo! Capital region!), and Villanova closed the day with an upset of Clemson. Two #4 seeds fell to #13 seeds, and two #5 seeds fell to #12 seeds.
This is what makes the NCAA tournament the greatest event in sports. NBA partisans will blather about the inferior talent, but to a basketball fan, these games more than make up for any talent deficit with the sheer intensity of the play. It’s a single-elimination tournament, which means you either win or go home, and I don’t care how good NBA players are, an all-or-nothing effort from college kids is way more compelling than a game-2-of-7 effort from highly paid professionals. It’s no accident that the biggest sporting events in the world– the Super Bowl, the NCAA tournament, the World Cup– are single-elimination tournaments. The NBA, NHL, and MLB with their best-of-seven series may sell more tickets, but the only time they can match the atmosphere is when they get to a Game 7, at which point, they’ve played six games to get to the single-elimination format they should’ve started with.
There’s also the fact that winning with lesser talent (as is almost always the case in these first-round upsets) generally requires much better game play than you see between more evenly matched teams. I think you may have to have played the game to appreciate that, though.
Anyway: Hooray for Tampa! And, as a bonus, West Virginia best Duke, so Life Is Good.
Upsets are great as long as it isn’t your team! Since I witnessed one of those big upsets (of my team) live, I am free to cheer on those four upsets and the elimination of hated teams like Duke. Ah, if only Belmont had pulled out a win for the Academic Progress Report brackets.
It’s always good to see Duke go down…
“This is what makes the NCAA tournament the greatest event in sports. NBA partisans will blather about the inferior talent, but to a basketball fan, these games more than make up for any talent deficit with the sheer intensity of the play.”
What you see as sheer intensity, I see as the inability to run the most basic plays that NBA players perform routinely. Like, inbounding the ball. Seriously: when was the last time you saw an NBA team that couldn’t get the ball to a teammate without getting it stolen? Never happens. Why do you never see full court pressure in the NBA? Because, unlike NCAA players, everybody in the NBA can handle the ball and pass to a teammate without getting intercepted. Why do you rarely see zone defense in the NBA? Because everybody can hit the jumper off the catch in the NBA.
Anyway, that wasn’t your main point, which was about single-elimination games. I’ll overlook the fact at game 7s are functionally single elimination. Basically, for me it comes down to this: I want to see the best team win most of the time. Playoff series reward good teams by giving them extra chances to beat a crappy team who lucked out a game 1 win. Other people like the unpredictability displayed in single elimination tournaments, but I’d rather see the best two teams play at the end of the playoff than two teams who had a run of luck. That’s just me.