March Madness came to a conclusion on this first weekend in April with an overload of hoops in the staging of both the Men's and Women's NCAA Basketball Championships.
The men's semi-finals featured a 72-71 buzzer beater win by San Diego State over Florida Atlantic, and an easy 72-59 win by UCONN over Miami. (Those 2 and 9 digits, by the way, were worth $125 to me in a complex pool run by pal Fred Shugars, so good on that!)
After those games were concluded, my comment to Linda was that Connecticut was going to roll over San Diego State in the championship game, and that is exactly what happened. During an eleven minute stretch in the first half, the Aztecs failed to make a shot from the field, UCONN built a 12 point lead and despite San Diego St. closing to within four points at one point in the second half, which made it uncomfortable for anyone who bet the Huskies and gave the 7.5 points, UCONN quickly regained control and cruised to a 76-59 victory.
This marks UCONN's fifth national title in a span of twenty-five seasons, which puts them in the rarified air of the college basketball blue bloods. It also should make those who still yearn for the glory days of the Big East of Looie Carneseca, Big John Thompson and others bathe in some sort of nostalgic glory.
Then there was the Women's Final Four, which featured two terrific games, LSU 79 - Virginia Tech 72 and Iowa 77 - South Carolina 73. I wrote Iowa's win and the dazzling performance of Iowa's Caitlin Clark IN THIS SPACE two days ago. In that piece what I didn't say was that while Clark was probably the best player in the tournament, LSU seemed to me to be the better team, led by a pretty good player herself in Angel Reese, and that it would take all of Clark's considerable skills to beat LSU.
What it made for was one of the most highly anticipated match-ups, men or women, in recent memory for the Championship. The 102-85 dismantling by LSU over Iowa will be remembered, regretfully, for a couple of things other than the basketball itself.
One was the officiating. The refs in this game felt that the nation was tuning in to watch them and not LSU and Iowa, and they effectively ruined the game. Key players from both teams, including Clark and Reese, got into early foul trouble which no doubt played a key role in how the game was played, and was highlighted by an absurd bullshit technical foul called against Clark in the fourth quarter. I'm not saying that it effected the outcome of the game, I think LSU would have won regardless, but it took away the possibility of what could have been a magnificent game.
Then there was this scene, which has dominated conversation about the game ever since it ended.
This is Reese taunting Clark with her "you can't see me" gesture (which, until yesterday, seventy-one year old me didn't even know was a thing) and pointing to her ring finger. Of course, social media has been ablaze ever since with people condemning Reese for graceless poor sportsmanship, followed by equally vociferous rantings of those defending her. And, of course, given the society in which we live, this is all coming down on racial, Black vs White lines. Clark, who has been known to showboat, taunt opponents, and play to the crowds herself, was probably a lot less bothered by it than those who are screaming about it on Twitter and Facebook. Me, I'm an old guy, and think that there should be enough sportsmanship in college sports so as to preclude such gestures, but I'm going to chalk it up to "let the kids play."
I am also betting that even as we speak, ESPN is pulling strings to arrange an early season game between Iowa and LSU next season in prime time. It'll kill in the ratings.
Finally, there is LSU Coach Kim Mulkey.
Mulkey's greatness cannot be denied. She has played on a national championship team at Louisiana Tech and on an Olympic Gold Medal winning team. She coached Baylor to three national titles, and now has added a fourth title to her resume at LSU. She is a great coach.
She also is a coach who, like so many of her counterparts in the men's game with whom we are more familiar, is a horse's ass on the sidelines during a game. Screaming at and intimidating officials, screaming at players, and, in what really bothered me, actually standing on the court while the ball is in play on the end of the court where her bench is located. What does she not get T'ed up for that? She obviously comes from the Bobby Knight School of Coaching Assholery. Can you imagine her acting that way in the performance of her job if she worked in, say, a bank, and accounting firm, or an insurance agency?
