Thirtyfive Seconds

April 4, 2008

FINAL FOUR PREVIEW - KANSAS JAYHAWKS

 
Each day this week, we’ll be previewing one of this year’s Final Four participants, little gunners that they are. Oops, we’re about to drop something. What? Knowledge. (That’s powerful, but true.) But since we’re babbling idiots, we found another blogger who knows a lot more about the team than us. We’ve already handled UNC, Memphis, and UCLA; finally, the Kansas Jayhawks, with the help of Cory from Rock Chalk Talk. jayhawks
 

We feel some sympathy for the Jayhawks, reviled by Tournament fans for holding off upstart Davidson and giving us the all-chalk Final Four that we currently enjoy. (We’re somewhat familiar with the sensation of everyone cheering against our team.) So we held their preview for last, hoping that cooler minds had prevailed. (We’re not convinced. We still haven’t put away our red and black banners. Sorry. We’ve never claimed impartiality.)

But there is great beauty in this Kansas team making its way to the Final Four. Bill Self, who has won everything but a Regional Final since first becoming a head coach at Oral Roberts (!) fifteen years ago, gets to pull a monkey off his back. Brandon Rush, who would be in the NBA were it not for a season-ending injury last spring, reaps a benefit for staying in school an extra year. And all of the KU fans we’ve met have been good-hearted, extremely knowledgeable fans who engage in surprisingly few couch burnings, considering they live in Lawrence.

But can they keep going and win the title? We turned to Cory from Rock Chalk Talk, who provided expert biased analysis as requested, and plenty of it. His responses to our questions, after the jump.

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FINAL FOUR PREVIEW - UCLA BRUINS

 
Each day this week, we’ll be previewing one of this year’s Final Four participants, little gunners that they are. Oops, we’re about to drop something. What? Knowledge. (That’s powerful, but true.) But since we’re babbling idiots, we found another blogger who knows a lot more about the team than us. We’ve already handled UNC and Memphis; today - the UCLA Bruins, with the help of Jamie from Bruin Scoop. tigers
 

We’ve been saying for a while now that we think that UCLA is the most talented team in the country, but that we’d believe they could win the national championship when they hoisted the trophy and cut down the nets in San Antonio. While you wouldn’t know it from their schedule sheet (not too many close final scores), the Bruins have let a ton of teams hang around far deeper into the game than the pregame matchup would suggest. Add the pressure building from two straight years of playing bridesmaid to the Gators, and we feel justified in our skepticism even while amazed by their skills.

But are Bruins fans feeling the same? We talked with Jamie from Bruin Scoop, who was kind enough to offer a ground level perspective. Her answers to our questions are after the jump.

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TRAVEL = EVIL

 

Pardon our delays yesterday afternoon and this morning - let’s just say that travel is abso-fucking-lutely miserable, and leave it at that. Kansas and UCLA previews up momentarily.

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