Looking Back at the Final Snore

For two weeks, you could hear it all around. This year, the madness was even more maddening! The buzzer-beaters poured in, the feel-good Cinderella stories more plentiful. For Pete's sake, George Mason University won the East region! This was decidedly the best NCAA tournament in recent memory.

At least, for two weeks it was.

The final act of America's favorite three-act play instead proved to be the very definition of anticlimactic. The three games we were left with were decided by 14, 15, and 16 points respectively, with Florida clinching on a 73-57 snoozer of a finale over UCLA that was hardly ever in doubt.

With all the pre-tournament hype about JJ Redick and Adam Morrison, and all the mid-tournament buzz about 11th-seeded George Mason, Glenn "Big Baby" Davis, and Tyrus Thomas, how many of us really would have been excited to know that the championship game would feature Joakim Noah and Jordan Farmar? Are these really the star players of the best two teams in the country? Or just the beneficiaries of a delightfully inefficient and unforgiving playoff system, as so often happens in college hoops?

To Florida's credit, if they weren't the best team in the country, they at least played the best tournament. Of their six opponents, only Georgetown truly challenged them before falling 57-53. The other five teams could come no closer than 13 points in the final score. By the time the Gators had reached the Sweet 16, they had won their two games by a combined score of 48 points. Has such an unheralded three-seed ever been so dominant before?

And yet all the while we wondered, how were they doing it? Not long ago, Joakim Noah was known more for his unmanly hair than his style of play. After all, he seemed too gangly, too skinny, too awkward to be able to lead his team over all comers. And who was his supporting cast? Guard Lee Humphrey did not become a household name until the national semis, where he rained three-pointers all over Cinderella's pretty little dress and sent her home from the dance crying. Al Horford? Corey Brewer? These names didn't ring a bell to many nationwide viewers until the final game.

And what about UCLA? If Florida defined dominance, the Bruins were the cardiac kids. While they reeled off an impressive string of blowout wins going into the tournament, they needed guard Ronald Steele to clank a wide-open three pointer at the buzzer to survive Alabama in round two. Then, of course, the Bruins played a truly awful first half against Gonzaga only to catch lightning in a bottle and win by the skin of their teeth in one of the tourney's most memorable scenes.

(In a related story, they were also responsible for the untimely death of CBS play-by-play man Gus Johnson, who spent that game's final three plays screaming at unprecedented levels until his head finally exploded all over press row. However, this may have only been a matter of time, but I digress...)

The Bruins' regional final win over Memphis was no picnic, either. Winning 50-45, UCLA's defensive muscle was just enough to compensate for their famine at the other end. Winning ugly with defense and dismantling the opposition's offensive weapons had become their signature. Not exactly the kind of team that lights up your television set.

It didn't have to be this way, either. For the past week, a nation fantasized about the little green and yellow guys of George Mason finding a way to advance again, reach, and perhaps even win the national title game. After all, look who they had beaten: Michigan State, North Carolina, (that's half of last year's Final Four and one 2005 national champion), another impressive Cinderella candidate in Wichita State, and finally, in perhaps the most epic game of the tournament, mighty UConn (be honest, how many of you had UConn winning it in your brackets and weren't even worried about the possibility of Mason ruining that party?). From that angle, to have to beat Florida and LSU or UCLA to win a championship no longer seemed so implausible.

As for LSU, this was a team that exposed Duke as a weak undersized team lacking in pure athleticism. If you weren't one of the Duke-haters laughing derisively at Redick for looking so foolish all day, you were screaming in horror at his stunning lack of ball handling, as his pocket was picked more often than a blind guy sleeping on a Manhattan subway. Tyrus Thomas was touching the sky routinely (and then emphatically screaming while shaking his head way more often than actually necessary) both on alley-oops and on opponents' lay-up attempts, and Big Baby was carving out the lane all to himself and pulling in every contested rebound.

With that kind of size, talent, power, and intimidation complete with spectacular plays galore, the Tigers were looking more and more like Space Jam's fictitious Monstar squad with each passing game. (Can't you just picture this LSU team entering an arena to the Monstars theme song of "Hit 'Em High"? Wouldn't that suit them perfectly? It's about time someone dusted that song off anyhow. All right, I'm done rambling.)

So with all that being said, what would have been better than a George Mason/LSU final? The ultimate Cinderella team led by little Tony Skinn versus the ultimate intimidator in LSU. David and Goliath themselves would have been proud to be that well represented. And even if LSU had won, they sure would be fun to watch. Either of these teams advancing to the title game would have provided that extra ounce of title excitement this final installment needed. Instead, writers like us here at SC spent sleepless nights trying, struggling to come up with any of the same kind of adjectives and hyperbole for such a seemingly vanilla and punchless final matchup as the one that unfolded Monday night.

So in closing, college hoops fans, when you remember the great NCAA tournament of 2006, think of the underdogs that bucked the odds: Northwestern State, Wichita State, Bradley, Texas A&M, Bucknell, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Montana, and, of course, George Mason. Honorable mention of course goes to 16-seed Albany, who pushed lazy-but-gifted UConn to their limit.

Think of the numerous miracle final shots that went down, from Jermaine Wallace, Cameron Bennerman, Tyler Hansbrough, Darrell Mitchell, Robert Vaden, and Chris Lofton. Kevin Pittsnogle and Kenton Paulino made theirs back-to-back to end one game, while Rashad Anderson and Denham Brown got theirs for the same team in back-to-back games. Christian Maraker's was just the beginning of a double overtime marathon that his underdog team did not pull out. Will Sheridan's never actually went in, but it still counted due to goaltending. Daniel Gibson's followed the wildest 15-second possession sequence you ever saw. Luc Richard Mbah a Moute's left overzealous Gonzaga star Adam Morrison in tears before the game actually ended. And then there were the seven gut-wrenching overtime periods brilliantly sprinkled throughout the tourney.

But as for those last three games, that quaint little thing they call the Final Four ... unless you hold one of those teams in the final game dear to your heart, you might as well just forget about that part. Pretend the tourney ended, in all its glory with the regional finals and George Mason University capturing every last sports dreamer's heart.