Does Sweet 16 Taste Bitter Without a Cinderella?
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by user LastRow
Oh man, you’ll have to forgive me…I’m still trying to shake off the cobwebs. I can’t explain it, but then again neither can my doctor…On last Thursday afternoon I fell into a four-day coma, coming out of it late last night. Ironically it was shortly after the USC Trojans ended Kevin Durrant’s brief cameo college career…Sorry Rick Barnes, life isn’t good for you today. And thanks to your shortfall of coaching ability, I really appreciate as how you screwed up my brackets…I should’ve known better than to rely on you, Rick! Although I thought you could out coach Tim Floyd…I mean, come now, it’s Tim Floyd! Um Rick, you lost to Tim Floyd, Tim Floyd, Rick…A joke of a basketball coach and you lost to him! You lost to a football school…Gosh, I should’ve known better than to trust you!
Speaking of brackets, that’s what this time of year is all about…Don’t screw the brackets up! No matter how one fills theirs out, whether it’s by the cute little uniforms they wear, the colors that they sport…This sentiment is heard for three weeks. So today, how many of us can still say this? I’m guessing not many…We all want to blow ours up! For some odd reason this year we don’t have any real noise steaming from teams who’ve reached the Sweet 16. The Cinderella’s all went home early this year…It must be because we had to "spring forward" earlier this year! Sure, the first round gave us VCU & Winthrop, but outside of that, that’s all we got! Although were these really surprises? For some yes, for others no. There was no ODU over Butler, Albany over Virginia, Illinois over Virginia Tech in this year’s "Gag Fest" of the tournament, Stanford over Louisville, and whatever else people had on their skinny black lines.
So now that VCU and Winthrop tried on their slipper and found out it didn’t fit, the lowest seed to advance to the Sweet 16 is UNLV as a seventh seed. Surprising? That it would be UNLV…Probably. For the fact that most had them losing to Georgia Tech & nobody had them beating Wisconsin. Surprised that a seventh seed would be the lowest seed left? Again, probably. This year’s tourney is unlike any other in recent memory where the teams that are suppose to survive & advance do just that. Some might be surprised at Butler advancing when many had them out in the first or second round, myself included…Though a five seed doesn’t qualify as a sleeper! Southern Illinois, even though their name suggests them to be a sleeper, their play tells us otherwise...For they didn't fold under the Hokie-Pokie press, unlike some Illinois team did.
Heading into this weeks Sweet 16 matchups no Cinderella’s will dominate the headlines, which is what the tournament is all about…There’s no team that has gotten hot at tournament time. Rather, for the most part, the teams that are left really are the 16 best. These are the teams that we’ve heard about all year long! Granted some might’ve slipped under the radar screen and yes we might be surprised to see a USC, a Vanderbilt, a Butler, a Southern Illinois, and a UNLV…But these, like the other 11, are truly the nation’s best. No, we won’t have a Carmelo Anthony type performance carrying his team on his back to the National Championship…That went out the window yesterday as Texas lost. There won’t be a 2007 George Mason who were the darlings of the tournament a year ago…Pittsburgh & Oregon both respectively ended all notions of that with their wins over the weekend. So with this all said, does this help or hurt the tournament?
Everybody likes to cheer for the underdog in this country…It’s what we do best! This year would that be UNLV, Butler, or Southern Illinois, since these aren’t household names, but their seeding says otherwise. What’s more important to these three weeks of Madness…The story of "David beating Goliath" or great basketball? During the first four days of this three-week journey we’ve seen neither of these happen. There’s been some upset sure, but not like normal. There’s been some great basketball played, but not like we’ve seen in past years. Some games that have gone down to the buzzer…Nail biting affairs, but not like we expect in a Dick Vitale, Billy "Fudge" Packer wet dream! For the most part these past four days have been like watching paint dry…Nothing to get are mojo’s running. The amount of good games through 32, well, for the most part can be counted on one hand.
With Goliath advancing and no fairy tales taking shape, does this hurt the tournament? We get so charged up by watching a George Mason and fellow underdogs making runs in previous years and exemplifying what this time of year is all about, that we want to see it happen on a yearly basis. Unrealistic? No, not really, because that’s why we love this three week span, but considering the fact there’s no Bradley’s, no Northwestern State’s, no Wichita State’s from last year and in years past we fell in love with UW-Milwaukee’s, Missouri State’s, Valpo’s, or Chattanooga’s…I don’t know, I get the feeling this year the tourney is really truly missing its Cinderella from its dance. I know many brackets are! Perhaps that’s why I fell into a coma in the first place, dreaming of her? For Cinderella has had a fatal four days. One question I do need to get an answer to is….If Kobe Bryant has a two-game point total of 115 during the first four days of March Madness does it really make a noise?
