Wow…George Mason eh? And LSU beats Duke? And Villanova crumbles against Florida? And then Memphis is stifled by UCLA? Wow…it’s all you can say…

Final Four…here’s my take:

UCLA - UCLA's defense is very tough…like Purdue in the 80’s tough… They held Gonzaga to 29 second-half points and Memphis to 36 points below its season average….and their defence enables them to slow the pace of the game, so they get to set tempo too…however they can’t score…even though they came back from 17 down to beat Gonzaga, in the first half of the Memphis game, UCLA had a stretch from the 9:45 mark to the 1:17 mark without a FG….then in the 2nd half: UCLA recorded exactly one FG between 17:13 and 4:16 for a total of 4 FGs for the half…against LSU UCLA must control the game's tempo, and the backcourt of Jordan Farmar and Arron Afflalo needs to keep up the scoring.

LSU – like Memphis in that they are really athletic, but LSU has post up options in the halfcourt in Glen "Big Baby" Davis and Tyrus Thomas that Memphis did not have…this team can play any tempo…good, but not great rebounding team…Tyrus Thomas is the best shot blocker in the world right now…in reality, LSU has the best frontcourt in college basketball…if you include freshman small forward Tasmin Mitchell, LSU has three future pros…they dominated Duke and Texas inside and should do the same to the UCLA’s Ryan Hollins, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Alfred Aboya and Lorenzo Mata who combined might add up to the same weight as a Davis breakfast at Denny’s…

In the end it’s UCLA’s guards against LSU’s bigs…Call it LSU 61, UCLA 52…

George Mason – very versatile team…can hit the three (9 of 18 vs. UConn)…can rebound (out-rebounded Michigan St. 38-23)…can defend inside (UNC shot only 36 pct)…can defend the 3 (Wichita St. shot 3/24 3-pt)…is remarkably resilient (shot 5/6 in OT vs. UConn)…heck as an 11 seed they beat 3 teams coached by current or future Hall of Famers (Tom Izzo, Roy Williams and Jim Calhoun)…they certainly have proved they belong in the Final Four… Tony Skinn, Folarin Campbell and Lamar Butler hit the 3-pointer better than any group of guards left in the tourney…
however, they are hot….really hot…white hot… Kent State in 2002 hot…don’t forget Kent State got to the Elite Eight in 2002 and lost to Indiana when its shooters went cold…very cold…so will George Mason stay hot or will they go cold?

Florida – Two things stood out in the win over Villanova: Florida defends the three better than anyone in the tournament and Joakim Noah is the next coming of Rasheed Wallace…first the defence…the Gators defensive game plan on the perimeter has them switching constantly on his screens and closing out on three point shooters…and Gators bigs are plenty quick enough to close out on mid range shooters off the shot fake or the drive and recover to the baseline on the bounce pass…plus, the Gators use their perimeter defence to get steals and run…as for Noah he is an preposterously agile player at 6-foot-11 with terrific, fast hands and very agile footwork…against Villanova he played 36 minutes, going for 21 points, 15 rebounds and 5 blocked shots…t he Gators are much, much bigger than George Mason…now so was UConn, but Hilton Armstrong, Josh Boone and Rudy Gay played like they thought talent could eclipse effort, whereas Noah is pure effort all the time…




In the end, George Mason finally goes cold…call it Florida 83, GMU 76.

AP All-America Teams were announced today:

FIRST TEAM -Adam Morrison Gonzaga Jr., J.J. Redick Duke Sr., Randy Foye Villanova Sr., Shelden Williams Duke Sr., Brandon Roy Washington Sr.

SECOND TEAM - Dee Brown Illinois Sr., Rodney Carney Memphis Sr., Rudy Gay Connecticut So., P.J. Tucker Texas Jr., Leon Powe California So.

THIRD TEAM - Craig Smith Boston College Sr., Glen Davis LSU So., Tyler Hansbrough North Carolina Fr., Nick Fazekas Nevada Jr., Allan Ray Villanova Sr.

HONORABLE MENTION: Arron Afflalo, UCLA; Maurice Ager, Michigan State; LaMarcus Aldridge, Texas; Jose Juan Barea, Northeastern; J.P. Batista, Gonzaga; Jahsha Bluntt, Delaware State; Ronnie Brewer, Arkansas; Keydren Clark, Saint Peter's; Mardy Collins, Temple; Paul Davis, Michigan State.; Terrance Dials, Ohio State; Quincy Douby, Rutgers; Jordan Farmar, UCLA; Mike Gansey, West Virginia; Daniel Gibson, Texas; Caleb Green, Oral Roberts; DeAndre Haynes, Kent State; Brandon Heath, San Diego State; Jeff Horner, Iowa; Ibrahim Jaaber, Pennsylvanial; Jarrious Jackson, Texas Tech; Marco Killingsworth, Indiana; Carl Krauser, Pittsburgh; Jack Leasure, Coastal Carolina; Charles Lee, Bucknell; Chris Lofton, Tennessee; Christian Maraker, Pacific; Gerry McNamara, Syracuse; J. Robert Merritt, Samford; Paul Miller, Wichita State; Paul Millsap, Louisiana Tech; Elton Nesbitt, Georgia Southern; Joakim Noah, Florida; Kevin Pittsnogle, West Virginia; Chris Quinn, Notre Dame; Brion Rush, Grambling State; Blake Schilb, Loyola of Chicago; Steven Smith, La Salle; Tim Smith, East Tennessee State; Ronald Steele, Alabama; Rodney Stuckey, Eastern Washington; Chad Timberlake, Fairleigh Dickinson; Darius Washington, Memphis; Marcus Williams, Connecticut; Jamar Wilson, Albany, N.Y.; Anthony Winchester, Western Kentucky; Ricky Woods, Southeastern Louisiana.

1) From the AP, the Reign/Rain Man cometh…again:

Slimmed-down Kemp eyes comeback

Former Seattle SuperSonic and Orlando Magic player Shawn Kemp says he's ready to get back in the game after three years of retirement from the NBA. Kemp, 36, retired voluntarily from the Magic in 2003, citing weight issues. During his last NBA season he weighed as much as 320 pounds, but he has slimmed down to 270 pounds through an intensive exercise regime, he said. "I've sat out this whole season to get in tip-top shape to make a comeback," Kemp said in an interview with Houston television station KRIV. The athlete's Houston-based agent, Tony Dutt, said he felt the weight loss would definitely rekindle Kemp's career. "I was basically relaying the information the GMs [general managers] were giving me: 'Until he loses the weight, we don't care if he can score 30 points a game. When he loses the weight, give us a call,"' Dutt said. "So there are going to be some phones ringing." The former All-Star faced troubles other than weight loss during his career, which began when he was drafted by Seattle in 1989. He took a leave of absence during the 2000-01 season to enter a substance abuse program and violated the league's anti-drug policy three times. Most recently, a Seattle judge sentenced him in May 2005 to five days of electronic home monitoring, a year's probation and a $440 fine after he pleaded guilty to attempted possession of more than 40 grams of marijuana. Kemp said those problems were behind him and he was ready to recharge his NBA career with an enthusiastic comeback. "My love for the game is very, very high," Kemp said. "I've made a living off of this game. I'm not coming back to play basketball for any financial reasons." "I'm not playing just to make someone's roster. I'm not just playing to make a comeback. My hopes and dreams are to be in the Hall of Fame one day."

2) Stewart Mandel of SI.com has drunk the kool aid:

Don't bet against 'em - George Mason has the tools to win the whole thing

I tried to warn you. Right here on this very Web site, a little more than two weeks ago, I did my best to foreshadow the improbable Final Four field that bore itself out this weekend. I even gave you two of the teams, LSU and UCLA. But you didn't listen, did you? When you filled out your bracket, you slotted one of the two supposed heavyweights, Duke or UConn, into that national-title line. It's understandable. Tournament history tells us it's almost always a good bet to go with the grain. After all, six of the past seven national champions (1999 UConn, 2000 Michigan State, 2001 Duke, 2002 Maryland, 2004 UConn and 2005 North Carolina) were teams that, like the Blue Devils and Huskies this year, spent the entire regular season at or near the top of the polls. As I wrote on Selection Sunday, however: "There is no team [this year] that, like North Carolina last year, scares the living bejesus out of people. There is no team that, like Illinois last year, seems to have that magical aura of destiny. But there are about 27 teams that, like Michigan State last year, are sitting there non-threateningly in the middle of the bracket right now just waiting to spring up and terrorize your office pool." Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you UCLA, Florida, LSU and George Mason? OK, so I can't take full credit. I did have another now-eliminated No. 1 seed, Villanova, winning it all. And George Mason was hardly in the "middle" of the bracket. But the same logic that applied to those selections back then -- the lack of truly dominant teams in college basketball this season -- is the same reason any of the four remaining teams could down the net next Monday. And that absolutely, positively includes George Mason. The reason the four No. 1 seeds are no longer with us is that, unlike in some years past, each had discernible weaknesses that an opponent was eventually able to exploit. Duke wasn't athletic enough. Connecticut lacked ball-handlers (though that seemed to hurt the Huskies more in their Sweet 16 win over Washington than in their Elite Eight loss to George Mason). Villanova lacked size. Memphis lacked experience. The same can be said, however, of the Bruins, Gators and Tigers. Though they've been fortunate enough to survive longer than numerous higher-seeded teams, each has negatives to go with its positives. UCLA plays phenomenal defense but, with only two real scorers in Arron Afflalo and Jordan Farmar, is prone to stretches where it can't buy a bucket. LSU is freakishly athletic, particularly with big men Glen Davis and Tyrus Thomas, but often throws up bad shots and plays out of control. Florida has its own frontcourt studs in Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer and Al Horford, but you can never be sure what you're going to get out of guards Taurean Green and Lee Humphrey. Then there's George Mason. The following is not meant as hyperbole. Nor should it be taken as gospel. However, I've covered the Patriots' last three games, and I've yet to identify their weakness. I've watched them win both with their big men (Jai Lewis and Will Thomas) and their guards (Tony Skinn, Lamar Butler and Folarin Campbell). I've watched them shut down North Carolina star Tyler Hansbrough and outrebound Connecticut's Josh Boone, Rudy Gay and Hilton Armstrong. I've watched them suffocate Wichita State's three-point bombers. I've watched Lewis and Thomas take over down low, Butler and Campbell light it up from outside and Skinn slash the lane like the speed demon he is. Surely Mason has areas that can be exploited -- every other Final Four team should be on the phone with Hofstra's coaching staff this week -- but their four tourney opponents have yet to find it. At this point, the only reasons anyone has to keep picking against George Mason are its name and its seed. So far, the Patriots have defied both. Sure, it's possible to see Florida's Noah or LSU's Tyrus Thomas and Davis overwhelming Lewis and Will Thomas. Then again, they more than held their own against Hansbrough, Armstrong and Michigan State's Paul Davis. Sure, UCLA's suffocating defense is a step up from what they've seen in the tournament to date. But in case you haven't noticed, Mason plays some pretty mean D (its four tourney opponents have shot 39.4 percent). Though seedings, history, NBA draft projections and our own better instincts might suggest otherwise, the reality is, George Mason has as much of a chance of winning the whole thing as it does of going out in the next round. So, too, do LSU, UCLA and Florida.

3) From Desmond Connor of the Hartford Courant, Denham Brown’s postscript at UConn:

Brown Gave It His Best Shot

Denham Brown held his head high as he sat bare-chested and ergonomically correct in his locker stall moments after his 20-foot three-point attempt to beat George Mason in overtime went off the far side of the rim. Brown has made that kind of fading three countless times in his career, but this one was different. This one, had it gone, would have sent UConn to the Final Four. This one, had it gone, would have been a dream come true for the senior. "I've been waiting for a shot like that all season," Brown said. "If I make it, we're going to the Final Four. If I missed it, I could live with it. I missed it. I'm not down on myself because of what happened. It's an incomplete season now. I'm disappointed in that. But I feel like I was supposed to hit that shot. I've been preparing myself all season to hit a shot like that and it fell short. I can live with me taking that shot. I obviously had a good look. I didn't force it over anybody. So, I shot it. It didn't go in." And so No. 11 seed George Mason is going to the Final Four in Indianapolis after a never-say-die 86-84 win over the top-seeded Huskies in the Washington Regional final at the Verizon Center Sunday. Brown said he was two steps ahead of Marcus Williams when he rebounded the miss and took the best shot he could. "The only other good shot you're going to take is, you're going to go all the way to the basket or you're going to take a jump shot," Brown said. "I looked at the clock; I had like a little over one second, 1.8 seconds or something like that. I bounced a guy off me and pulled up all in rhythm." Brown doesn't feel like the goat today. He's not. It wasn't his shot at the end that lost the game. It wasn't his decision to keep the rock rather than give it up after he got the rebound - following two missed free throws by Jai Lewis with 6.1 seconds left - and got in position to take the shot. It was a good look and a good shot. He just missed it. Sure, UConn fans would have liked Rashad Anderson to have had the ball. But where was he? Brown couldn't even see Anderson because he had two Patriots on him, a smart move, given his end-of-regulation heroics Friday night against Washington. Brown, who dropped in a right-handed hook over Adam Morrison with 1.1 seconds to lift UConn over Gonzaga in the Maui Invitational in November, did the right thing. Hey, if it weren't for his swooping reverse layup at the end of regulation, the Huskies wouldn't have been in position to win it in OT. No, there are a few reasons why their season ended at 30-4 and without a national title. Three of them you should be familiar with because they've been haunting this team for a while: No breakdown guard to help Williams; poor defense the past three weeks or so; and uneven post play. On Sunday, the post play was a big surprise. Lewis and Will Thomas combined for 39 points and 19 rebounds. Josh Boone and Hilton Armstrong totaled 14 and nine. If it weren't for Jeff Adrien, who had 17 points and seven rebounds, it could have been ugly. "That's what happens when you don't play the type of basketball you're capable of playing," Boone said. UConn utilized its famed big-to-big double team on the 6-foot-7, 271-pound Lewis and he still had 20 and seven. Thomas wheeled inside for 19 points and 12 boards. The 6-7 Thomas had 18 and 14 against Paul Davis and Michigan State in the first round. But it should have been GMU trying to figure out a way to stop UConn's big men, considered among the best in the country. "Last night when I went to bed or this morning when I woke up, I would never have thought that would have happened; maybe a wash, certainly not that," UConn coach Jim Calhoun said. "We did a great job in the first half of stopping the three but the second half, they lit us up. We haven't played good defense the past three weeks anyways and that was highlighted there. Yet if we just could have done a better job on post play we could have got ourselves a win." Lewis and Thomas had eight of 12 George Mason's points in the overtime. The Huskies didn't give up any threes in the OT but they allowed the Patriots to shoot 9 of 18 from the arc. "A couple times I was saying, `How did George Mason beat us?"' Brown said. "And it looks like they wanted it. I can't say they wanted it more than us but they wanted enough to get themselves in position to win the game." UConn was in position, holding a 43-31 lead with 8.6 seconds left in the first half. But perhaps in a sign of things to come Folarin Campbell drove the lane for layup and was fouled with less than a second to go. He hit the free throw. UConn led by nine at the break. When the second-half horn sounded, the Patriots pushed to victory only to be halted, temporarily, by Brown's reverse layup that seemed to dance on the rim for a minute before it fell through. "When Denham made that shot, I definitely did think we were going to pull it out," Boone said. "The way things had been going, it seemed like it was just supposed to happen that way. He was supposed to make that shot and we were supposed to end up winning in overtime. Unfortunately it didn't happen that way." It wasn't Brown's fault that it didn't happen that way. Anderson said he would trust Brown with that shot anytime, any day, anywhere; Williams and Boone agreed. But what the Huskies have been able to mask for the past month or so came back to bite them.

4) Chad Ford of ESPN.com with his draft watch:

Draft watch: Noah hot, Redick not

It has been a dramatic March for NBA draft prospects. Most of the top prospects in the draft were still playing this weekend and several of them dramatically helped (or hurt) their stock over the course of the last four days. The reverberations were felt all the way at the top of the draft. NBA scouts and executives still are debating who the No. 1 pick in the draft should be. At this point it's doubtful there will be a consensus anytime soon -- with as many as seven prospects still hopeful of being No. 1 overall. Here's our second look at who's hot and who's not in the NCAA Tournament:

Who's Hot?

Tyrus Thomas, PF, LSU: He was on no one's top-100 prospect board at the start of the season. A few of the NBA scouts who live in the area didn't even mention him when I put together my preseason top 100 in September. But after two dominating performances this weekend against Duke and Texas, a growing number of scouts are saying that Thomas is the best prospect in the draft. His combination of size, athleticism, aggressiveness and skills (he showed some ball handling and a sweet 12-foot baseline jumper this weekend) are unmatched in the draft. Yes, he's still raw offensively. But watching him this weekend, it's getting difficult to come up with reasons why he shouldn't be considered the No. 1 pick in the draft. Eight teams passed on Amare Stoudemire in 2002 because they believed he was too raw to make an impact in the league. There won't be more than two, maybe three teams at most, who'll pass on Thomas this year. In fact, if Thomas has two more great performances left in him this weekend, he could be the consensus No. 1 pick by draft night.
Joakim Noah, PF/C, Florida: Noah wasn't on anyone's top-100 list either at the start of the season. But a stellar March has him in the top five as well. Like Thomas, Noah also has a great motor, excellent athleticism and more skills than you think. He too has been the best player in his region. And unlike Thomas, he's a legit 7-footer. If Noah was 25 pounds heavier, he'd be the No. 1 pick, hands down. As it stands now, he's No. 4 on our big board with an outside shot at the No. 1 pick for teams such as the Hawks and Raptors, who are in desperate need of size.

Josh McRoberts, PF, Duke: McRoberts didn't dominate the tournament like Thomas or Noah have. But he's shown enough potential and grit (a la Marvin Williams last year) to have firmly planted himself in the top 10 should he decide to declare for the draft. McRoberts has great size, an all-around game and excellent athleticism for his position -- giving him as much upside as just about anyone in the draft. If he declares this year, he's probably guaranteed a top-10 pick with strong workouts. However, here's the dilemma. If he stays another year at Duke and continues to impress, he could be a top-three pick in the draft next year. Does he stay in Durham and work on his game? Or does he take the guaranteed money and run? My heart says he'll stay one more year and spend more time preparing himself for the NBA. My mind says he's shopping for Escalades as I write this.

LaMarcus Aldridge, PF, Texas: A 26-point, 13-rebound performance against West Virginia on Thursday had scouts buzzing that Aldridge had solidified his place as a potential No. 1 pick in the draft. A 2-for-14 performance against LSU on Saturday had scouts backtracking -- but only a little bit. Aldridge's game against LSU wasn't as bad as it looked in the box score. He did have 10 rebounds and five blocks. Most of his shots were on line, they just didn't go in. While it's clear that big, physical players such as Glen Davis of LSU are going to push him further away from the basket, there's no reason to believe that on a better day, Aldridge can hit those shots he took. Besides, how many 310-pound power forwards is he going to have to face in the NBA? Clearly Aldridge needs to get stronger, but scouts believe that the rest of the package is there. He's holding onto our No. 1 spot on the big board by a thread. But truth is, scouts are split in two over whether Aldridge or Thomas is the best power forward in the draft.

Randy Foye, PG/SG, Villanova: It's tough to fault Foye for Villanova's demise in the tournament. He did everything for Villanova the past four games. He scored, he defended, and at times, he ran the team as a point guard. His 3-point shot has tapered off at a fairly alarming rate toward the end of the season, but for the most part NBA scouts believe he's a good enough shooter. He's still trying to convince scouts that he's a point guard at the next level, but there are enough NBA scouts and executives convinced he's a basketball player and it's still pretty likely he'll end up in the top 10 on draft night.

Honorable mention: Al Horford, PF, Florida; Marcus Williams, PG, UConn; Jeff Green, F, Georgetown; Glen Davis, F/C, LSU; Kyle Lowry, PG, Villanova; Brandon Roy, SG, Washington; Ryan Hollins, F/C, UCLA; Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, SF, UCLA; Patrick O'Bryant, C, Bradley

Who's Not?

J.J. Redick, SG, Duke: Redick's worst nightmare happened on Thursday. Not only did Duke suffer an early exit at the hands of LSU, but his fantastic senior season came into serious question with NBA scouts after the athletic LSU backcourt forced Redick into his worst game (3-for-18 from the field) of the year. This wasn't just a case of Redick's shot being a little off. He was horrible, and LSU freshman guard Garrett Temple drove him crazy. His length and athleticism were too much for Redick. He just couldn't get clean looks at the basket. One game shouldn't taint a fantastic senior season -- but what every NBA scout that I talked to noted was that Temple is the type of athlete Redick will have to play against every night in the NBA. With that said, his stock isn't sliding as much as some might think. Scouts also understand that Redick won't be a star in the NBA and coaches won't be devising defenses to stop him the way LSU did. If Redick gets on a good team with a low-post presence, he should be an excellent sniper in the NBA. If asked to do what he did for Duke this year, it's going to get ugly. Look for him to fall in the range we've predicted for him most of the year: somewhere between 13 and 22 come draft night.

Adam Morrison, SF, Gonzaga: Morrison had a better tournament than Redick did, but his stock also suffered a bit after Gonzaga blew it against UCLA. Morrison is a well-known commodity among NBA scouts. They know his strengths and weaknesses. What Gonzaga's loss did was scrape away some of the mystique that was artificially inflating his stock. Had Morrison led Gonzaga to an NCAA title, it would've been tough for GMs to justify not taking him No. 1. Now that's not so hard. Morrison is human too, and for the first time in several months, NBA scouts are acknowledging that again. Morrison is a very good, but not great, NBA prospect. That realization will likely cost him a few spots in the draft unless a team such as the Sonics or Blazers gets the No. 1 pick.

Rudy Gay, SF, Connecticut: By this time of the year, NBA scouts expect to see flashes of greatness from top-five prospects. Thomas, Noah and Aldridge all delivered at times. Gay? Not so much. He did have 20 points against George Mason in a losing effort on Sunday. But for the most part, scouts didn't see anything over the past four games to convince them that Gay is a potential No. 1 pick. He grabbed some boards, hit a few jumpers and made a few plays. But he was rarely the best player on his team, let alone the floor. He has the tools. But he still has a long way to go before he figures out how to use them. That won't stop an NBA team from taking him in the lottery. But for now (until NBA team workouts that is) Gay has slipped out of contention for the No. 1 pick in the draft, according to the scouts Insider spoke with this weekend.

Rodney Carney, SF, Memphis: Carney has been trying to dump the "soft" label for the past three years. He did a great job of exorcising those demons during his senior season, but a so-so tournament has brought his stock back down to Earth. Carney's 2-for-12 performance against UCLA had scouts raising all the same concerns about toughness, focus and ability to perform in the clutch. Some team will fall in love with his combination of athleticism and shooting ability in individual workouts, but the tale of the tape is going to overcome.

Allan Ray, SG, Villanova: After Ray's great 25-point performance against Arizona last weekend, a few scouts were talking about him as a potential late first-round pick. But after two awful performances against Boston College (3-for-15) and Florida (5-for-19) that talk has cooled considerably. Ray has had an excellent season, but his NBA upside is questionable. He's a good, but not great perimeter shooter who's undersized for his position and doesn't have the versatility to be anything more than a bench gunner. This isn't the way he wanted to end his career at Villanova. It will take a stellar performance at the Orlando pre-draft camp to get Ray's stock back on track.

5) Pat Forde of ESPN.com tries to make sense of the madness:

Everything we believed about college hoops is wrong

Now that everyone's bracket has been folded, spindled and Masonically mutilated, it's time for a moment of reckoning. After two of the most stunning, suspenseful and spellbinding weeks in the history of the sport, this is what we have learned: Everything we believed to be true about this college basketball season has been rendered false. Up is down. Down is up. The earth is flat. The sun rises in the west. The smartest Patriots coach is not Bill Belichick, it's Jim Larranaga. And America's team is George Mason. Tell me you expected that before this sublime samba began.
Here's how wrong we've been: All season, we believed the Big East to be the best conference in the land, deserving of its record eight bids and two No. 1 seeds. Update: The Big East is out of the tournament. We believed the Big Ten to be the second-best conference in the land, deserving of its six bids and three top-four seeds. Update: The Big Ten might as well have been the MAC, failing to advance a single team to the Sweet 16. We believed the Southeastern Conference to be significantly damaged by all of the players who left early for the 2005 NBA draft, dooming the league to a sixth straight season without a Final Four representative and continued SEC-ond-tier status. Update: The SEC has two teams in the Final Four, with the possibility of having the title game to itself. We believed the Pacific-10 to be a hideously bad league this year.
Update: UCLA is in the Final Four. Washington and Arizona acquitted themselves well. We believed college basketball to be a guard's game now more than ever, with the evacuation of most top big men to the NBA before they put down roots on campus. Update: Sell that notion to Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Jai Lewis, Will Thomas, Glen "Big Baby" Davis, Tyrus Thomas and Ryan Hollins. They were your heroes from the regionals, and none of them plays in the backcourt. (ESPN.com hereby invites 310-pound Big Baby and 275-pound-at-least Lewis to St. Elmo Steak House in downtown Indy for an eat-off. We'll pick up the tab, unless it runs into five figures.) We believed last there was a significant drop-off from the top four or five teams to the rest of the pack this year -- and as of last Wednesday, believed there was a chance all four No. 1 seeds could make the Final Four for the first time ever. Update: None of them made it for the first time since 1980 -- but a No. 11 seed did, tying the record for worst seed to get there. We believed that the only problem with the Era of Parity argument was the 26-year stretch without a true Cinderella's reaching the Final Four. (Pennsylvania in 1979, if you're scoring at home.) Sweet 16s are nice, but can you truly label it parity if the mid-major types have no realistic shot at winning the national title? Update: Make way for Mason, which shattered the Cinderella ceiling by dispatching three of the top-10 programs in America: Michigan State, North Carolina and Connecticut. When a No. 11 seed from the Colonial Athletic Association makes the Final Four, the tournament really is an egalitarian triumph. All things really are possible. (Unless you don't get in. Think how they feel at Hofstra right now. The Pride beat George Mason twice late in the season and narrowly missed getting a bid.) We believed we'd never see a regional round as breathtaking as last year, when four Elite Eight games rife with tension took four overtimes to resolve. Update: Five of this year's eight Sweet 16 games went down to the final seconds, and three of the four regional finals either went into OT or sustained their drama into the final minute. We believed it might be a long time before we saw another overtime-forcing shot in a regional final as dramatic as Patrick Sparks' rim-dancing 3 to tie Michigan State last year. Update: Denham Brown's reverse layup against George Mason bounced on the rim only one less time than Sparks' 3 before falling through at the buzzer. We believed in November that LSU, Florida and UCLA were probably a year away from serious contender status. That's why the preseason AP poll had the Bruins 19th, the Tigers 32nd and the Gators 41st. George Mason? Please. The Patriots got one fewer preseason poll vote than Hawaii, Houston and Notre Dame -- which is to say, none. Update: One of those four walks off with the nets of the RCA Dome a week from tonight. That's the chaos we leave behind. Here is what we have to look forward to: We know that UCLA has nearly double the NCAA Tournament victories (89) of the other three schools combined (48). And the Bruins lead the Traditionless Trio 11-0 in titles. We know that one coach will win his first title, and that only Florida's Billy Donovan has been to the Final Four before. We worry that UCLA-LSU could be the ugliest defensive brawl at the Final Four since Michigan State beat Wisconsin 53-41 in 2000, setting the sport back several decades. We predict that George Mason gear will be sold at an insane rate in the Northeast, and that every Big East fan base will wear its Patriots clothing when UConn visits in 2007. We predict that fans in Indianapolis will embrace George Mason as the collegiate-level, latter-day Milan High School. The home state of the greatest underdog hoops story of them all is going to love the most gorgeous March Madness story since Villanova '85 or N.C. State '83, take your pick. College basketball needed this run -- needed it to make everyone believe again in miracles.
We wonder how different this tournament would look if Gonzaga could hold a lead against UCLA. If Corey Brewer hadn't thrown in a prayer while being pulled to the floor against Georgetown. If Denham Brown's final 3 hits net against Mason. If Darrel Mitchell's final 3 draws iron against Texas A&M. "When you get into the NCAA Tournament, if you restarted the program over again, you would have four different teams [in the Final Four]," Florida coach Billy Donovan said Sunday night. "That's what happens when you play a one-shot deal." That's the impact of chance and circumstance upon the Big Dance. It produces heroes you couldn't imagine, stories you'd never dare dream up. And sometimes, it challenges everything you believe to be true.