After a few hours of sleep, a few hours of work, a few cups of coffee and reading more than a few other people’s takes, our final thoughts on last night’s championship game:

Not to be Debbie Downer, but … : You go on a date. Dinner? Mediocre. Dessert? Too small. Parking? Ridiculously expensive. But you get home, the action in the bedroom makes up for it all, and you chalk it up as a altogether excellent night. You then proceed to make the exact same plans the next time you have a night free of the rugrats. Are you lying to yourself a little? Yeah, but you are at least aware of it, and choosing to remember what matters most.

We understand this tendency of us fleshbots - but it makes for too-rosy-by-half reporting at times. The party line this morning was that last night’s game was excellent from start to finish, which is only half right. In the first half, Memphis couldn’t make (or create) a decent shot for Rose or CDR, and Kansas let them stay in the game with pisspoor rebounding. Neither team was passing the ball effectively (each team netted 11 steals, which is awfully high for a championship game, and there a dozen or so more available), and a Jayhawk team that normally relies on the deep ball shot a less-than-mediocre 13 percent from behind the arc.

So, yes, the ending of the game was fantastic, and deserves to be remembered as such. But let’s not pretend that we were watching 40 minutes of world-class basketball. (But, of course, that’s OK, because we got what we signed up for. We’re just being honest with ourselves.)

The Unsung Hero: Now, to shine a more positive light (because after all, we enjoyed the game, didn’t you?), where is the love for Darrell Arthur? We know that the MOP had to go to Mario Chalmers … it just had to … but Darrell Arthur was the real player of the game for Kansas. 20 points, 10 rebounds (5 offensive), solid defense in the paint? His play opened up the lane for Kansas, and more importantly allowed the Jayhawk perimeter players to concentrate on CDR and Rose.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story: Not to pick up the flag in the never-ending bloggers vs. MSM war, but last night’s game provided a perfect example of how it is often a blogger who gets the story right. Every where we looked this morning, writers zoomed in on Memphis’ notoriously terrible free throw shooting as their raison de la mort. Gary Parrish at Sportsline? Free throws. Andy Katz at ESPN? Free throws. Weintraub and Feinstein? Inter alia, free throws. Even usually top level blogs, like Deadspin and Rush the Court, fell for the party line.

We aren’t saying that Memphis didn’t lose the game because of missed free throws - they did, at least in part - but it wasn’t due to their normal bad free throw shooting. In fact, their strategy seemed sound - the entire final two minutes, the ball stayed in the hands of their two GOOD free throw shooters, CDR and Derrick Rose. They just hit a streak of bad luck at the wrong time. MJD gets a tip of the cap, or theoretical dollars, or whatever it is we give out on the internet as prizes these days, for getting the nuance of this story right.

Our grandfather is fond of saying that he’d rather be lucky than good, and KU was both tonight. Lucky when they needed to - Memphis couldn’t make shots or free throws down the stretch, allowing the Jayhawks to overcome a 9-point deficit with 2 minutes left to send the game to overtime. Good when they needed to - Kansas kept up the momentum they stole all through the extra period, and put a foot to Memphis’ neck. Special kudos to Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arthur, both of whom played with the balls of a porn star all night.

As for Memphis - a fantastic season comes up one win short. No shame for this team - they did everything asked of them BUT win the national title. Not too shabby when you consider that tasks on their to-do list included “make up for playing in a shitty conference”, “put up with being underrated all season with a smile”, and “try not to laugh at Calipari’s slickback”.

More photos grabbed off the wire feeds after the jump. We’ll take the morning off from writing morning roundups, and be back with more thoughts on this game and a preview of the offseason in the afternoon.

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - In response to demands from coaches and fans of college basketball, as well as rising rancor from media coverage of the sport, the NCAA promised that it would make changes to the way in which college basketball chooses its national champion starting in 2009.

“We didn’t want to throw away seventy years of tradition on a whim, but tension against the tournament-style format has been building for years,” said NCAA President Myles Brand on Monday morning after a three-hour meeting with university presidents. “Ultimately, we think that it is time that college basketball came into agreement with our other major revenue sport so that the fans can finally be satisfied with end-of-season matchups that are both satisfying and will conclusively determine the best team in the sport.”

The new Poll of Objective and Observable Percentages (POOP) system*, designed by ACC Commissioner and BCS President John Swofford and a team of trained monkeys, is based on the successful Bowl Championship Series used in Division I-A football. Teams will be rated on a weekly basis, starting Jan. 1 of each year / season. The rankings will take into account three factors: the team’s rank in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), the team’s rank in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll, and the team’s average rating across eight computer-based ranking systems. Each of these three sources will be treated equally, and the average of the three values will constitute the team’s straight POOP score.

“Our hope is that by using POOP to determine who plays for the national championship, rather than the current haphazard system of the NCAA tournament, we’ll be able to restore some normalcy to the proceedings,” said Swofford. “I mean, the whole March Madness name is a double-edged sword, ya know?”
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Where posterization happens.

THE GAMES EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Country 1, Hollywood 0
Memphis 78, UCLA 63

We’re guessing that whatever team ends up drafting Kevin Love in a few months will wish that this picture didn’t exist. With just under five minutes to go and UCLA fighting back against a seven-point Memphis lead, Chris Douglas-Roberts (or CDR, because apparently everyone needs an abbreviation) ran a perfect backdoor cut and slammed the ball down onto UCLA wunderkind Kevin Love. If we were Gregg Easterbrook, we would have written “game over” in our notebook. As we are not (and thank God), we enjoyed another delicious bite of honey chicken and resumed conversation with our family.

A nip-and-tuck game throughout the first half, Memphis pulled away early in the second half and never looked back. Both Sadie and Jamie were correct last week - the battle in the paint determined the outcome. We were just surprised that it was Memphis and Joey Dorsey that won that battle.

And Now Kansas Really Doesn’t Give a Damn About North Carolina
Kansas 84, North Carolina 66

In this game’s waning moments, Jim Nantz and Billy Packer described the match as “a play in three acts.” We think Jim was getting a little overdramatic, perhaps in preparation for the Masters this coming weekend. The better analogy was to a debate between two moody mean girls:

First 15 Minutes
Kansas [models in mirror]: I’m fierce!
Carolina [gorges on Doritos]: I’m a hiefer!
Result: Kansas 40-12.

Second 15 Minutes
Kansas [cries into pillow]: Why did he leave me?
Carolina [shoves pins into voodoo doll]: Serves you right, bitch.
Result: Carolina 38-14.

Final 10 Minutes
Kansas [beams as it applies blush]: He still loves me!
Carolina [gobbles antidepressants]: I hate you, God! I hate you! I wish I were dead!
Result: Kansas 30-16.

And everyone lived happily ever after. And, yes, we were visiting our teenage cousins this weekend. How did you guess?

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.

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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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.

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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Stockholm Syndrome!

THE GAME EVERYONE NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Alright, We Give Up - We Love It
Bradley 83, Tulsa 74

After careful consideration … and the prospect of no more college hoops until November … we’ve been turned around on the College Basketball Invitational. We were initially skeptical since the abject goal of the tournament was to make money off exhibition games, and the sham justification offered was, “Hey, more teams would kill to play in the postseason, even if its completely lame and no one watches!” (Which describes many regular season games as well, FWIW.) We fought against this load of crap, until sleep deprivation and a family sized bag of Funyuns forced us to accept that while their argument was a sham, it was also correct.

Players and coaches, as a general rule, enjoy games. Fans enjoy attending games. And no one is tying the rest of us down and forcing us to watch, so we can’t think of a person who is being harmed by another post-season tournament, even if we all have to admit that it’s kind of ridiculous on its face. Plus, we remembered that we like people making money. (Well, everyone but the noble amateur student-athlete, of course.)

So, Bradley and Tulsa, we embrace your battle to determine which of you is #98 - especially since you seem determined to keep your season going as long as possible. Faced with elimination at home, Bradley rushed out to a 14-point lead in the first half, then held on for the win.

OTHER HEADLINES, JUST FOR KICKS

This Doesn’t Bode Well: Memphis has suspended backup guard Andre Allen for this weekend’s games. As we covered with Sadie yesterday, Allen was a key part of Memphis’ plan to defend Darren Collison and Russell Westbrook. Plus … you know, Calipari has never had a reputation for having a quick hand with punishment, especially when the stakes are high. So our guess is there is more to this.

The Offseason Starts Early: We have no intention to do a Fulmer Cup-style tracking of all the offseason legal transgressions in college basketball (mostly because - Christ, we don’t know how Orson does it, either.) But this was too good to pass up - Penn State guard Stanley Pringle was masturbating in a library. Now, we’re not saying that such library activity is necessarily wrong - everything has a time and inappropriate place - but Pringle started the jackin’ while actively trying to engage a woman in conversation, so it’s a little more funny “oh shit” than funny “ha ha”. But we just … can’t … resist …

Once you pop, you can’t stop - even in the face of arrest.

Each day for the rest of 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 deep, but true.) But since we’re babbling idiots, we found another blogger who knows a lot more about the team than us. Yesterday we handled UNC; today - the Memphis Tigers, with the help of Sadie from Go Memphis Tigers.

You know what’s delicious with crow? Barbecue sauce, and lots of it. Strong on spice, just the right amount of sugar and rich in flavor - anything that kill the awful taste of being wrong.

Anything to make the pain go down more easily.

Sufficit to say, we were wrong about the Tigers; we thought a conference season’s worth of weak opponents would leave them ill-prepared for the tournament, but, we suppose that’s the beauty of the tournament. After a close call against Mississippi State in the second round, they’ve breezed their way to the Final Four.

For a much more informed view on the Tigers as we get ready for Saturday, Sadie was kind enough to provide some expert biased opinion. Her responses to our questions come after the jump.

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Now with more Buckeye flavor!

THE GAME EVERYONE SOMEONE? IS TALKING ABOUT

So Much for the Repeat
Ohio State 81, Ole Miss 69
UMass 78, Florida 66

We can’t even pretend to be excited about the NIT. Such excitement, however, is what we are paid to do (and by “paid”, we mean “spared from Orson’s mighty whip”), so some quick takeaway thoughts from the games:

1) No rematch between OSU and Florida - which as we covered last week, would have mattered just as much as Roy Williams playing Kansas again, since approximately the same number of players were around for each of the previous rounds of those battles.

2) We really respect the fans that turn out of the NIT games, making the trip to MSG for the finals. While we were at Georgetown, the Hoyas were stuck in NIT purgatory for a few years - and we’ll be damned if we didn’t tune those teams out as soon as Selection Sunday came and passed. We’re impressed by the fans whose loyalty extends beyond disappointment and follows their team straight into the mouth of oblivion.

3) Hahahahaha - SEC iz Da suckz!! (Really? No. But it’s fun to say, no?)

4) For reasons we cannot begin to explain, we think UMass will beat tOSU tomorrow night.

AND NOW, ONTO MORE FUN TOPICS

Not So Much with the Pillaging, Fellas …

What happens in Mexico apparently must stay in Mexico, until diplomats intervene or charges are cleared. Two Portland State players were hauled into a Mexican jail after one beat the snot out of a fellow American tourist while the other fled the scene. We enjoy this - two American college students are involved in battery against a fellow American college student, but because they do it at a Mexican resort, they will get to be a punchline for years months some indeterminate time.

Just to confirm, young high school recruits when you sign on to play with a team, do not attempt to emulate their mascot. Fellow PSU players now stand on notice that raping and pillaging are strongly discouraged. Centenary players … well, same rule, but don’t feel like you have to tuck the shirts in.

Hardy har har, funny men
The boys at PTI decided to open yesterday’s show with a patently obvious April Fool’s prank. The joke wasn’t terribly funny - sure, tug at our heartstrings - but we appreciated the effort all the same for the unintentional comedy. (Don’t sue, Simmons!)

Further, it confirmed out belief that you could come up with a topic off the top of your head, hand it to Tony and Mike, and the exact same debate would occur regardless: Factual description, Wilbon defends “his boys”, Tony sounds old, Wilbon makes half-informed point that sounds fully-informed because he’s Mike Wilbon, Tony makes crass remark and/or does penguin dance. Why, yes, as a matter of fact, we aren’t sure why we watch this everyday still either!

Each day for the rest of this week, we’ll be previewing one of this year’s Final Four participants, little gunners that they are. Ooops, we’re about to drop something. What? Knowledge. (That’s deep, but true.) But since we’re babbling idiots, we found another blogger who knows a lot more about the team than us. Today - The North Carolina Tar Heels, with the help of Brian from Tar Heel Fan.

You know, they’ve been overrated all season. They got bonked by a terrible Maryland team at home, and depantsed by a deeply flawed Duke team. And who cares that they blew out their first four opponents in the tournament? Two of those teams were barely mediocre, and every squirrel finds a nut. Maybe Pitino was drunk Saturday night. We’ll never know.

Ah, dammit, who are we kidding? We’ve said it before, so we might as well say it again (and again through clenched teeth) - Carolina has put on an absolute show during the first two weeks of the tournament, and comes in playing better basketball than any other amateur team in the land.

But that doesn’t mean much once the ball is tipped, and frankly we’re gonna feel weird saying anything else positive about our sworn enemy. So for a better bead on what to look for from the Tar Heels this weekend, we asked Tar Heel Fan for some expert biased opinion. His responses to our questions come after the jump.

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Motor City Dust Bowl Basketball!

THE GAME EVERYONE NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Tulsa is Champion! Something!
Tulsa 73, Bradley 68

Conference USA fans, we owe you a distinct apology. We’ve bashed your conference from the moment we started writing for this here blog. But now, it appears that was all in haste, for CUSA’s own Tulsa Golden Hurricane (do not confuse with Broken Arrow Golden Shower) has clinched a championship by beating the Bradley Braves last night!

[receives a note from off stage left - pauses, and clears throat]

Excuse us - we heard “One Shining Moment” and thought there people were playing in a tournament that actually mattered. Instead, Tulsa continues to play in the College Basketball Invitational, a tournament known only to us, its owners, the fans of the home team, and creepy message board trollers in Rolla, Missouri. And further, their win clinches nothing, since CBI uses a three-game series to crown its champion. Sorry for the confusion. CUSA, go back in a corner and think about what you’ve done - trying to fool us like that. Makes us want to call in that golden shower for you.

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We’re not quite ready to talk about the chalk-tastic weekend just yet. We need something to cleanse our palate with something far more soothing - something from a more simple time, a more hopeful time - something from, say, late Friday night:

Memories of Cinderella and jokes of forcible rear entry soothe the pain of chalk. (HT: Kleph.)

That’s more like it.

As you all know, Davidson missed their chance for the game-winning, lead-story-writing, script-already-in-development shot that would have led every tournament broadcast for the next twenty years because Stephan Curry couldn’t get an open look. Some people are crediting Kansas’ defense on the play - and there can be no doubt that in those last sixteen seconds, the Jayhawks clamped down impressively. Though we do not come to kick those that are down, we disagree.The scripted play (with Curry asked to bring the ball up and find his own shot) was macho but immature in design. Curry has thrived when working with teammates on ball screens and motion plays; on the most important play of the season, sending him up the court to go mano-a-cinque-mano with the Jayhawks was insane.

Though we of course mourn the loss of our last upstart in the tournament, we have a tough time feeling too terrible for Davidson. They had a great season by any standard, a phenomenal season by SoCon standards, and [insert clichéd dig at pampered lifestyle of students at a school where they do your laundry for you here].

However, anyone who has ever played on an underdog team that made it farther than it should have - and back when we could be confused with an athlete, we were on such a team - knows that when you do lose, the hurt is much deeper than it would have been earlier. Davidson’s loss mattered more yesterday because, unlike in any of the previous rounds, they actually had something to lose. While the loss eats at them today, the mere fact that a small liberal arts school from the SoCon made it to that level should be lauded and remembered for years to come.

As for the other three games? UCLA, suddenly awakened from its slumber through the first three rounds (and, really, the last three months), remembered that it had the defenders to shut down Xavier’s perimeter game and a big man who could bully them down low. Memphis, playing with a chip on their shoulder the size of … well, Texas … , shut down D.J. Augustin and forced the Longhorns to (unsuccessfully) rely on other scorers. And UNC continued to play the best ball of the tournament, taking the lead over Louisville five minutes into the game then holding it with a vise grip.

And thus, we are “treated” to the first Final Four with all four #1 seeds. We’ll have more thoughts on this later this afternoon.

There was not a single thing to dislike about this game. A nip and tuck first half that featured slick play and hard defense. The underdog pulling away while the favorites watched in horror and protested in waste. A mid-major star who is about one win away from crossing from underhyped to overhyped. And the full result - Davidson 73, Wisconsin 56, and the little #10 seed that could is one win away from wiping George Mason off the maps.

On the flip side, Wisconsin … and Big Ten basketball by extension (given Michigan State’s paltry performance) … got knocked on its ass, and we couldn’t be happier. Wisc plays a style of basketball that would better be described as “football”, since they rely almost entirely on post play, penetration, and beating the ever loving bejesus out of each and every opponent. Elbows, butt rams, subtle shoves, blatent shoves - this is Big Ten basketball, and it’s thoroughly unfun to watch. Unfortunately, it has also been successful in tournaments past - in fact, Davidson’s win was the final blow struck to our brackets, since we had Wisconsin in the Final Four. We’ll gladly forfeit our measly entry fee to see a fun team like Davidson advance instead.

We know that three other games happened tonight - all were, for the most part, boring blowouts and unworthy to report. (Stanford tried to keep it close with UT, but apparently, putting together a program with 1/6 the money of Texas means you get the Lopez twins, but no discernable offense.) So we head to bed tonight with visions of another double digit seed making the dance … and, since they are playing a Bill Self coached team, you have to like their chances, right?

Sure, it’s not quite the same as the first weekend. But the 2nd weekend of the tournament is where even more drama happens, in many respects - can Davidson actually pull a Mason? Which #1 seed will bite the dust in a most unsavory fashion? And when will it get warm enough for girls to wear skirts and flipflops? (Not that we’re watching, honey.) For these reasons and more, we humbly log in to our MMOD account and bring you our live thoughts as the games progress.

7:10: Let’s get this started. The first pair of games: (7) West Virginia vs. (3) Xavier in the West, and (1) UNC vs. (4) Washington St. in the East. The West game tips off now, with the East game starting in about 20 minutes.

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So, we get back in the saddle for real tonight by doing what we wanted to do all last weekend - liveblogging the games. We’ll be posing all night, and hope you’ll join us. In the meantime, we’re enjoying Bobby Knight’s Pepto-tastic v-neck on, of all things, Baseball Tonight. Dear tWWL: corporate synergy is annoying, but nonsensical corporate synergy is amusing. Keep it coming.

Anyway - for your amusement, belittlement, scorn, and gambling, we present our just-as-informed-as-yours-but-we’ll-call-them-expert-because-we’re-writing-this-damn-post predictions for tonight’s games:

It’s just a little hobby, we’ve only dabbled … but Aunt Lou says hello.

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