#1 Wisconsin defeated #1 Kentucky

We all love the underdog. March Madness wouldn't be March Madness if we weren't rooting for the small school with 4000 students to defeat the major program with seemingly unlimited resources. And when a team like Kentucky has such a large, loud, and vocal fanbase, it is hard not to cheer against them. I have met a number of wonderful, sweet Kentucky fans over the years, but it also only takes a few arrogant fans on Twitter to cause many people to label Kentucky fans as "entitled". But every fanbase has idiots, and every fanbase has die-hard fans. Even if Kentucky feels like the Evil Empire, one of the things I have learned over time, is to have sympathy for the fans of every team.

Twice in my life I've been fortunate enough to have season tickets to sports teams that were nearly perfect. In 1998, the Minnesota Vikings lost just twice, once in the regular season and once in the NFC title game. That was the year that rookie Randy Moss came out of nowhere to become the NFL's greatest deep threat. With Moss joining Cris Carter, Jake Reed, and Robert Smith, and teams still shading against Randall Cunningham’s theoretical running ability, the offense was nearly unstoppable. In the state of Minnesota, as the victories kept piling up en route to 15-1, there was a genuine feeling of joy that doesn't come from just any play-off bound season. This was finally the year that everything had fallen into place. The radio stations made up theme songs about how the team was going to the Super Bowl. The news ran profile pieces on fans who had been season ticket holders since the first season at Met stadium. This was finally the year, until it wasn't.

In 2005, I was a season ticket holder for the Fighting Illini basketball team with Deron Williams, Dee Brown, and Luther Head. They lost just once in the regular season. As the wins continued to pile up, every college basketball broadcast became a joy to watch. Basketball experts that were skeptical in January, saw the team take the trip to Michigan St., shoot the lights out, and the doubt went away. Everyone acknowledged how truly special the team was. There were the impromptu celebrations at the airport, like the night after Illinois won at Wisconsin. That was the year, until finally a North Carolina team (which had players taking bogus classes) defeated Illinois in the final.

If I learned anything from those two years, it is that while it is fun to see dominant teams fall, sometimes the season means more to the fans of the team that is winning. When you see your team reach a record of 37-1, you tend to have a lot of irrational confidence. People always throw out stupid phrases like "team of destiny", but when your team is in the midst of a run like that, the feeling is palpable. When a team goes on a run like that, and you invest emotionally, sports provides a feeling of joy and happiness that cannot be matched.

Thus while millions of college basketball fans smiled for a few hours on Saturday Night, time will pass and the loss will soon be forgotten. But for Kentucky fans, the loss will linger forever. The chance at a perfect season is gone.

And even for a program with the history and resources of Kentucky, there is no guarantee it will happen again. They will interview the top prospects on Kentucky in the fall, and ask them if the next team can go undefeated. But we can't overlook how hard it is to accomplish what Kentucky just did. To have a dream season like this takes a perfect storm. If Willie Cauley-Stein didn't hurt his ankle in the NCAA tournament last year, and if he had left for the NBA, I'm not sure that Kentucky's defense could have achieved the same level of dominance. If the Harrison twins and Cauley-Stein didn't come back, I'm not sure Kentucky would have had the veteran leadership to avoid an unexpected SEC road loss. If everyone wasn't willing to sacrifice playing time, particularly the brilliant freshmen, and someone had enrolled elsewhere, the team might not have had the depth to start 38-0. If the players were more selfish, they wouldn't have had the teamwork to accomplish what they did. This really was a perfect storm.

For Kentucky fans, this loss will sting for a long time.

And there are no guarantees, even for a program with the resources of Kentucky that there are many more championships in the near future. Kentucky has gone from a national title to an NIT trip before. Not all elite prospects pan out. Some NBA team might make John Calipari an offer he can't refuse. If you are a skeptic of the Kentucky program, you'll say some cheating scandal is just waiting to be uncovered. If you are a believer in the Kentucky program, you have to face the reality is that all it takes is for some dumb kid to take a free car from some booster auto-dealer for things to come crashing down.

For Kentucky fans, this loss will sting for a long time.

To the neutral fan, the shot-clock violation and non-called flagrant foul might cancel out. But to a Kentucky fan, you will never get over the fact that the referees missed that Wisconsin shot-clock violation.

For Kentucky fans, this loss will sting for a long time.

But here is the thing about this game, and why it worked on so many emotional levels. Wisconsin is having just as special a season. True, the Badgers are not undefeated. But Bo Ryan has never had two players as special as Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker. This is unquestionably the pinnacle of Bo Ryan’s legendary coaching career.

And I mean this with no disrespect to Wisconsin. But a two-year run like this, may NEVER come around again. Players like Frank Kaminsky almost never elect to return to college. There are certain programs in college basketball that have history and tradition and end up in the Top 10 almost every year. But even these programs have no guarantees. Indiana is probably the most storied program in the Big Ten, and they haven’t been to the Final Four since 2002.

That moment of jubilation, when the stadium was rocking in Indianapolis, when the undefeated dragon was slayed, when Wisconsin avenged last year’s Final Four loss – that is the greatest feeling in sports. As much as this year’s team meant to Kentucky fans, this year’s team meant just as much to Wisconsin fans. And it probably meant more. Because the emotional journey of watching a player like Frank Kaminsky from his freshman year to his senior year is so much more satisfying than cheering for any first-year phenom can ever be.

The only problem for Wisconsin is that Saturday’s win wasn’t the championship game. When a game has that much emotion involved, it is going to be really hard to turn around and play a great team so quickly.

Game Notes:

1) Things that receive a lot of hype rarely live up to the hype. This game did. Wisconsin was nursing a one point lead. With 27 seconds left in the game and 6 seconds left on the shot-clock, Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky, the AP national-player-of-the-year, was given the ball at the three point arc. He was being guarded by Kentucky’s Willie Cauley-Stein, the most commonly cited Defensive Player of the Year. It was strength against strength. Kaminsky drove, spun in the lane, and drew the foul. Kaminsky made two free throws that proved to be the final margin. If you wrote a script like that, it would be rejected as too unbelievable.

2) It was amazing how much smarter Wisconsin was at exposing mismatches. In the first half, Kentucky’s 5’9” Tyler Ulis ended up matched up on Wisconsin’s 7’0” Frank Kaminsky. Wisconsin immediately cleared that half of the floor and fed Kaminsky the ball for an easy inside basket. In the second half, Kentucky guard Devin Booker was matched up on Wisconsin forwards Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker. Both Kaminsky and Dekker drove and earned an old fashioned three point play. Meanwhile Kentucky didn’t recognize when they were in the same situations. At one point Kentucky’s Dakari Johnson was being guarded by Wisconsin’s Bronson Koenig in the paint. And rather than turn and shoot over him, Johnson actually passed the ball back out of the paint.

3) I couldn’t be happier for Wisconsin senior Traevon Jackson. Jackson who had made so many game-winning shots in his career, missed the game-winner against Kentucky in last year’s Final Four. Then this year he hurt his foot against Rutgers. Jackson could not play on his senior day; he could not play in the Big Ten Tournament; and he could not play in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. If he was going to come back, it seemed likely that he wasn’t going to be able to contribute in any meaningful way. And a player who averaged 4 assists per game and 11 points per game last year, came back with just one assist and 1 of 4 shooting in the regional semifinal and regional final.

It was painful to see Jackson take and miss jumpers at this stage of his career when he used to be so explosive at taking the ball to the basket. But in the middle of the second half of the Kentucky game, (between the 12 and 9 minute mark), Jackson showed that he still had one more heroic moment in him. Possession after possession he relentlessly took the ball to the basket. And while he was a little lucky (the one time he was tied up, his team had the possession arrow), Jackson got to the line and ensured that Wisconsin would end the game in the double bonus.

For all the seniors whose careers end with injuries and never get one more chance, Jackson’s was the story that finally had a happy ending.

4) With just under six minutes left, and Kentucky leading 60-56, the Wildcats started standing around and dribbling instead of running offense. Why would anyone think a 4 point lead was enough with six minutes left against a team as prolific offensively as Wisconsin? Once Kentucky fell behind by 4, they finally got their offensive aggression back, and Aaron Harrison drove and was fouled, but it was too little too late. Kentucky is far from the only college team to do this, but teams start working the clock too early, far too often.

5) Wisconsin turned the ball over more than usual, but I think Kentucky’s size is one of those things you really can’t simulate. There was a play where Nigel Hayes tried to execute a simple give-and-go after receiving an inbounds pass in the corner, and when he turned around, he was shocked by how big the defender was, and threw the ball away.

I thought all season long that Wisconsin was the worst possible opponent for Kentucky because of their defensive rebounding and shooting, but Kentucky was nearly perfect in other areas. Kentucky had just 6 turnovers, and the turnovers nearly made the difference.

6) People might feel that there is nothing historic on the line on Monday Night now that Kentucky lost. But I think there might be something historic on the line. In the preseason, I projected the Top 4 teams as Kentucky, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Duke. The AP Poll agreed with that. And those are currently the Top 4 teams in the Pomeroy Rankings. In other words, those are the four teams with the best margin-of-victory on the full season. That means that in order to win a national title, Wisconsin is going to have to beat the other three best teams in the nation in back-to-back-to-back games. I can’t imagine that this has happened very often, if at all. If Wisconsin wins, this might be one of the most impressive NCAA tournament runs ever.

To put this in comparison, Connecticut won the title last year but faced only one team in the Top 8 in the margin-of-victory rankings in the entire tournament.

#1 Duke defeated #7 Michigan St.

I remember when I was a kid and I went to a few Minnesota Twins games. One day after a thrilling extra inning victory I asked myself a simple question. “Wouldn’t it be great if you could go to every home game and watch every game?” As a kid, school always got in the way of those day games. But I am sure I was not the only kid to dream of 162.

With baseball, watching 162 games is a little bit crazy. The season is clearly too long. But the college basketball dream is not crazy. 39 games over 5 months, 8 games per month, at most one game in the middle of the week – you can watch it all and still live a well-rounded life.

Duke’s win means the Blue Devils have a very good chance at another national title. It is a chance to put Mike Krzyzewski even more in the conversation with John Wooden for the best coach of all time, if he was not there already. Jahlil Okafor gets a chance to show everyone who voted for Frank Kaminsky for national-player-of-the-year that he is the hardest man to cover in college basketball.

But for fans who have invested for 38 games so far, a win in the Final Four means something else. A win means one more chance to see one of the most fun Duke teams in Duke history play again. For fans who have fallen in love with Justise Winslow’s diverse game and Quinn Cook’s unselfishness, just seeing them play again is a gift all its own. No matter what happens on Monday Night, Duke has played in the absolute maximum number of games it can play.

For the alumni that tune in during March, a title may be the only satisfying conclusion. But for the folks that watch from the start of the season, the journey is about the Grayson Allen moments. Grayson Allen has mostly been known as a spot-up three point shooter for Duke. So of course, when playing a team that runs a great scouting report like Michigan St., breaking tendencies is important. And twice during the game, Allen was aggressive in faking the three, beating his man off the dribble, and taking the ball to the basket. Allen showed his game was more diverse than people gave him credit for. For the one Duke freshman who really looked young in November, it was a satisfying break-through.

But Allen had one more moment left. After missing a three attempt from the corner, he raced after his own miss, grabbed the offensive rebound, and dunked home the miss. The stadium exploded, Allen almost got in trouble with Mike Krzyzewski, and yet the moment was perfect.