2011: The Year of the Improbable Final Four

Butler's Matt Howard

Connecticut, Kentucky, Virginia Commonwealth, Butler. Not the Final Four most of us predicted, or would have even thought possible. Many said (myself included) that one of the teams, VCU, should not have even been selected into the tournament in the first place. And judging by their regular season resume, they indeed should not have. Butler returns as a Cinderella for the second consecutive year, being an inch or two from knocking Duke off in the championship game a year ago and becoming national champions. In order to do it this time around, they will have to knock off the suddenly surging Rams of VCU, then upset one of the big name schools, the winner of UConn and Kentucky, in the championship game.

By now your bracket may have already been through the paper shredder, possibly just after the first round. You're not alone. As you may already know, this was possibly the worst bracket year ever. Two Final Four teams probably wins you your pool. Some pool winners might only have one correctly picked Final Four team. After all, there is only ONE bracket of the almost six million on ESPN's Tournament Challenge that have all four selected correctly. The wild card causing this was VCU, who had no impressive victories in the regular season and had to begin their Road to the Final Four with a play-in game against USC. After knocking off the No. 1 seed Kansas Jayhawks this past weekend, Jamie Skeen and the VCU Rams are one of the last four standing, their improbable journey not yet completed.

Apart from the team, university and its fans, who has enjoyed this VCU run the most? Probably the selection committee's chairman, Ohio St. A.D. Gene Smith. Why? The bracket his committee unveiled was criticized to no end (see my post from March 10, Let the Madness Begin, where I was also critical of the committee's selections), because of the admittance of VCU and UAB in place of Colorado and Virginia Tech for the final at-large bids. ESPN's Jay Bilas called this "a joke", and college basketball analysts and fans across the country were in an uproar. But boy, has VCU ever proved them all wrong. Sure, UAB went on to haplessly fall in the play-in, and maybe Colorado should have made it in to the tourney instead of them, but VCU's admittance into the Dance was meant to be. The Rams have made Smith and the committee look like geniuses.

VCU seems to play better on short rest, when teams have less time to prepare. Lacking the athleticism and pure skill of the teams they have knocked out, they find ways to win in other ways, such as moving the ball around for open threes. Other teams have not had a chance to see them play much, and only a day or so to prepare, so they do not know what to expect. The only team that came close to beating VCU was the 10th-seeded Florida St. Seminoles, who had the multiple days in between the first two rounds and the Sweet Sixteen to prepare. Butler will have an entire week, and I am sure few will be taken aback if the Bulldogs advance one again to the finale.

National Player of the Year candidate Kemba Walker leads the charge for UConn as they face Brandon Knight and the young guns of Kentucky. Most people had Kentucky losing to Ohio State on their bracket (I boldly went with Kentucky in one of the few picks I got right). UConn, the Big East champ, was a favorite along with Duke out of the West region. While UConn is the favorite, based on the way Kentucky has played recently this game is essentially a toss-up, and an argument could be made for either squad.

Most of this country will be cheering loudly for the mid-major to knock of the big-name school on April 4 in Houston for the conclusion of *arguably* the greatest postseason all of sports has to offer. Does either VCU or Butler have enough left in the tank to pull out two more Ws? Or will this year be a repeat of the last, where Goliath gets the best of David? We'll know next week.