North Carolina showed us all how superior they are to the rest of the competition. They put Michigan State in it's place just minutes in to the game. It was obvious that there was a huge class difference between the two teams. It was like a Ferrari racing against a Geo Metro. The Spartans could not match Carolina's size, speed or shooting. They proved Tom Izzo right since he had said earlier that if both teams played well, Carolina will win for sure. I was expecting Izzo's coaching to be the great equalizer, but there was just too much talent differential for him to make a difference.
Too bad Michigan State couldn't hang with the Heels. There was a lot of talk about how the state of Michigan was battered by the economic downturn and how this teams kinda brought them together and provided some distraction. I was not there to see the communal impact of this event, but from all accounts, it sounded like it had some potential to be a feel-good story. But it was not meant to be. Unfortunately the Spartans ended up spoiling the finals because I am sure UConn would have given NC a much better fight. But then again, we can't blame the Spartans for UConn's under-achievement.
Roy Williams now has 2 rings in 4 years. He has cemented in place among legends and in the hall-of-fame. He has probably replaced coach K as the premier coach in the Carolinas and might even surpass Dean Smith as a legend when all is said and done. Of course thats assuming he doesn't get caught pimping for one of his recruits or something crazy like that. It's amazing how he was considered incapable of "winning the big one" just a few years ago at Kansas. He moves to NC, wins the big one and all of a sudden he is now a genius among geniuses. His team was just to good and was never even challenged in this tourney.
North Carolina made this year's tourney a little uninteresting at times. I don't remember a NCAA tournament in recent years with so little drama. Ironically, the big-name schools seem to be getting bigger and better in the NCAA tournament which is supposed to be the great equalizer while the talk of parity is rampant these days in other sports like NFL and college football. The NCAA committee should screw up more to make the tournament more competitive. It seems like they are on-the-dot with their seeding and ranking of these teams the last few years.
In other news, the MLB season is off and running. How do you know it's early days yet? When you check the standings and see the Toronto Bluejays at the top of the AL East. Thats a dead giveaway that the season is still too young to matter. The World champs have lost both games to the Braves and Tim Lincecum didn't have a great start today for the San Francisco Giants. Neither did Brandon Webb for the Arizona Diamondbacks. I just thought those are some mentionable things from the first 2 days of the season.
No comments:
Post a Comment