I had my Ohio St. vs Georgetown recap up shortly after the game, and some of the national columnists had already posted columns as well. Andy Katz echoes my sentiment that Mike Conley carried his team here. And Greg Doyel agrees that the game was disappointing. Click here for Doyel's column. Doyel won't name the officials, but I will. They were Ted Valentine, Dick Cartmell, and Mike Kitts.
And you can't see it, but my local NBC affiliate had quotes from almost every Georgetown player claiming that they lost because of turnovers. So, with all my early sentiments covered, here are a few more.
-Despite the fact that the game was clearly disappointing from a college basketball fan perspective, you have to be thrilled if you are an Ohio St. fan. Even with Ron Lewis shooting 1-8 from the field and Oden playing 3 minutes in the first half, Ohio St. was in control from start to finish. Great teams can win with different personnel and different styles of play, and Ohio St. is becoming a great team.
-Thad Matta had an obvious, but rarely mentioned comment after the game. The fact that Oden missed the start of the season due to injury may have given the team more confidence playing without him.
UCLA vs Florida Thoughts
Florida finally started taking (and making) some two point shots. But in a statistical oddity, 22 of Florida's 45 shots were three pointers, which means almost 1/2 their shots were threes. And Florida lead for most of the game! Florida normally takes threes about 1/3 of the time and UCLA opponents take threes about 1/4 of the time, so this was quite a statistical abberation.
It sort of suggests that Ben Howland departed from normal strategy and packed it in the post in an effort to not see a repeat of the 2006 final. Sadly for the Bruins, a different strategy resulted in the same outcome.
Sunday at the Final Four
When your team wins (as Ohio St. and Florida did), there is no better feeling than to enjoy the Sunday between games. From the moment you open up the local paper and find 8 stories on your team in the special Final Four section, to the final newcast of the day, it is all gravy. One of the silliest, but most fun things about recent Final Fours is that they put a full-size bracket up on one of the buildings in town. If you go tommorrow morning, you can even see them put up stickers for Florida and Ohio St. advancing to the next round.