Not Every Dog Has His Day

The Dogs were not served last night in the national semifinals. VCU and Kentucky both went down, although both games were quite good.

The Butler/VCU game actually left me with an ambivalent feeling. It was good to guarantee that the two underdogs would play each other, in that it guaranteed one of them would play for the title. But it was bad in that it didn't give them a chance to both knock out another top seed, and be able to play one another for the title.

In any event, I was happy to see Kentucky go down. I was disappointed about VCU, however. I was hoping that they could continue their run. Like George Mason, five years ago, I had a feeling they were going out, but I was definitely hoping the feeling was wrong.

In any event, major kudos to the Rams for showing so many other teams their horns. I hope that they'll do a bit better next year than GMU did the year after their run (winning their conference but wiping out in the first round of the tournament, as I recall).

In any event, Butler/UConn tomorrow night promises to be a good game, as well. Unfortunately, if I were a betting man, I would put my money on UConn. But we'll hope for one more for the dogs.

The Madness Continues

I suppose the two basketball games today were decided the only way they could be, with both underdogs continuing on (well, assuming you can really call Kentucky an underdog, regardless of relative rankings/seedings).

Congratulations to VCU, and especially to their coach, Shaka Smart, who definitely outmaneuvered Kansas. Actually, that was really surprising; Kansas started out playing really well, with some beautiful passing. That led me to believe that VCU was going to be sunk, and badly, but they came back pretty quickly. And they showed good defense with a lot of threes in the first half to take a hefty lead at the half. Kansas managed to cut it down to, I think, a two-point deficit at one point, but that was the closest they got.

And congratulations to Kentucky as well. Their win assured that the final four won't include any #1 or #2 seeds. It's only the third time no top seeds have made it, but I'd be shocked if either of the two previous times didn't include any two seeds as well.

Oh, and a small correction to my previous mention of the tournament. I was sure I remembered GMU being a 12 seed, but it was pointed out today that they were also an eleven seed.