Stomp The Lunatic

It was a very physical second half. But that seemed to suit the Michigan Wolverines just fine. They jumped out fast in the first half, but there was a big run where Elliot Cadeau drove to the basket for a layup and then on the next possession drilled a three-pointer from near the top of the key to force UConn to call timeout as Michigan had grew the lead to 11 points with just 13 minutes to play. And as you would expect from the other games from the tournament, UConn started chipping away at the lead.

The Huskies’ Alex Karaban drove to the hoop for a basket, and then after a defensive stop, Silas Demary Jr drove to the hoop for a basket, and the Huskies had cut the lead to 5 points. Michigan would miss another layup, but Nimari Burnett would steal an errant pass, get the ball to Roddy Gayle Jr up the court and pass a nice alley-oop to Aday Mara for a big dunk to extend the lead back to 7.

Braylon Mullins would hit a couple three-pointers to try to keep UConn in the game, but Yaxel Lendeborg countered with a couple baskets in the lane to keep Michigan ahead. Meanwhile, one of the stories was that each time Michigan was fouled, they would make their free throws – they hit 20 in a row at one point.

With 2:30 left in the game, Alex Karaban made a three-pointer to cut the lead to 6. Then, Tarris Reed stole the ball by tapping it away from Roddy Gayle Jr, and looked like he saved it to Solo Ball, but Ball would miss the contested layup and the Wolverines broke the other way.

Michigan tried to drive to the hoop on the fast break, but the ball got knocked loose and the play broke down. Somehow, the ball got kicked out by Roddy Gayle Jr to Trey McKenney, and McKenney made a step-back three-pointer from the wing to make it a 9 point lead with around 2 minuets left.

Still there is no quit in the Huskies. Tarris Reed got fouled on an offensive rebound and hit both free throws to cut the lead to 7 points. Alex Karaban and Elliot Cadeau would trade free throws to set up the final minute.

Michigan would try to get the ball into Lendeborg, but he didn’t handle it well and it went out of bounds to the Huskies. They responded by getting the ball out to the wing to Solo Ball, who banked in a three-pointer with a defender in his face. Its suddenly a four point lead, and the Lunatic thought to himself – this certainly can not be happening again. NO LEAD IS SAFE DURING MARCH MADNESS!!!!

Michigan got the ball across half court and into Roddy Gayle’s hands who was fouled. And after the Wolverines hit 20 free throws in a row, the reliable free throw shooter missed both of them. NO LEAD IS SAFE DURING MARCH MADNESS!!!!

But the Huskies magic had finally worn out – they would get the ball into Alex Karaban at the top of the key for three, but he would miss. McKinney would get the rebound. This time, McKinney would hit the free throws, Malachi Smith tried to drive to the basket and quickly score, but his layup missed and the ball was intelligently thrown down the court by the Wolverines. Karaban would run all the way back to get it, but with only 4 seconds left, the game was over. UConn would not get another shot off, and the Michigan Wolverines celebrated.

The Big 10 champions were also the NCAA men’s National Champions with a 69-63 victory over the UConn Huskies. And so, the 26 year drought for the Big 10 is finally over!!!! Congratulations to the Michigan Wolverines – our 2026 NCAA men’s basketball champions!!!!!

It was a fun back-and-forth first half for the National Championship. Michigan jumped out to an early 9-4 lead as Michigan’s Morez Johnson had two layups and Eliot Cadeau had a layup and 3 free throws. But UConn’s Solo Ball and Alex Karaban would hit three-pointers to close the gap. With about 10 minutes to play, Karaban would hit another three-pointer and give the Huskies a 16-13 lead.

Every time the Wolverines would bully their way into the lead as Aday Mara would hit a layup in the lane, UConn would hit a three-pointer to regain the lead like Braylon Mullins did with about 6 minutes to play.

But the big play might have been on an offensive rebound where Alex Karaban held onto Morez Johnson’s arm and got called for a hook-and-hold flagrant foul. Johnson would hit the two free throws to tie the game at 25, and then Yaxel Lendeborg would hit a layup to give Michigan a 2 point lead. After a missed three-pointer by Karaban, Aday Mara would score again in the lane.

The Huskies’ Solo Ball hit a three-pointer to cut the lead back to one, but the half would end with Mara scoring again in the lane and Roddy Gayle tipping in a missed layup by Lendeborg to go into the locker room with a 33 to 29 lead.

UConn fought valiantly on the boards, as they got 8 offensive rebounds and were only behind by 2 rebounds overall. The pace of the game is at the path of the Huskies – I think one of the announcers said the least amount of points Michigan scored in the first half of this tournament was 47 points – the Huskies held them to 33. And Michigan went 0-8 for three-point range. Lindeborg only had 4 points. All factors that would seem to point towards the Huskies.

But the Huskies did not have a stop for Morez Johnson Jr (who had 10 points) and Aday Mara got hot at the end of the half for 6 points. At the end of the day, both teams have to be happy. If you told Dan Hurley they would only be 2 rebounds behind Michigan and the Wolverines would miss all their three-pointers, he would probably be pretty happy with that result. And if you told Dusty May that would have happened and his Wolverines would have still played such great defense that they were up 4 points, May would be pretty happy as well.

Its been a great game – hopefully we have another 20 minutes of exciting basketball.

I tried to make the argument last year not to panic that no Cinderella team made it to the Sweet 16. A sample of one is not a reason to set off the alarms, especially when that sample of one has happened before. It is certainly not the first time that no mid-major teams seeded 12 or higher didn’t make the Sweet 16, and it certainly isn’t going to be the last.

I have to admit that I am a little more nervous now that we have a sample of 2 years instead of 1. But the classic reasons that are given are still a little inaccurate. The main reason I hear that Cinderella is dead is because with NIL and the transfer portal, no mid-major team will be able to keep their talent. Its not that I don’t think that is true because it is. But we are fooling ourselves if we believed that didn’t happen in the pre-NIL era.

I do think the NIL era has created a problem that is hurting Cinderella. The classic place that Cinderella would emerge is from the 5-12 and 4-13 matchups. There were typically two reasons for that. The first obvious one is that those 12 and 13 matchups were the 8 best mid-major conference champions – most of the time these were teams who won 28+ games in the season and played in a mid-major conference that was better than people realized.

The second one is that typically at least a few of those 4 and 5 seeds were power conference teams that were struggling towards the end of the season. They started off strong, but ran into their toughest part of the conference schedule and went on a losing streak. So, you get a team that is struggling a little and pair them up against a 28+ team mid-major champion who does nothing but win.

One thing that I think has happened with NIL (or maybe was just random luck) is that the 5 seeds did not seem to meet that struggling team as before. Instead, the 5 seeds were St. John’s (the Big East regular season and conference tournament champion), Vanderbilt (who made it to the SEC championship game), Wisconsin (who was the only Big 10 team to beat Michigan before the conference tournament), and Texas Tech (who might be the only one who fit into the team dealing with a losing streak at the end of the season due to a late key injury).

It is hard to determine if this is because NIL has balanced out the power structure at the top of the power conferences or simply that the injury bugs didn’t impact as many teams as usual. But it did seem like some of the more vulnerable teams (typically due to an injury) for an upset like North Carolina fell to the 6 and 7 seed lines, where they traditionally fell on the 4 and 5 seed lines (and the 6 and 7 seeds were simply inconsistent teams). At a minimum, you would not normally see a team win both the regular season and conference tournament from a power conference like St. John’s and end up a 5 seed. And before we say that the Big East isn’t a power conference, lets remember that UConn is playing in the national championship and of course, from the Big East.

But I think the bigger thing that happened this year is all the upsets in the conference tournaments. Normally, the 12 and 13 seeds are teams that won both their conference regular season and tournament.

This year, the only 13 seed that won their regular season title was Troy. And the only 12 seed that won their regular season title was High Point (which was also the only 12 or 13 seed that won their game). Cinderella normally came from the regular season champions from the mid-majors, and of the seeds where Cinderella normally showed up, only 2 of the 8 of them were regular season champs.

It probably didn’t help matters that after High Point pulled off their upset of Wisconsin, they drew SEC tournament champion Arkansas in the second round.

It certainly is a concerning trend. But I am not ready to give up on Cinderella. Cinderella represents the hope of all mid-major schools everywhere. And March Madness is all about hope. I have to believe that Cinderella will eventually be back. The glass slipper will hopefully return, and hopefully return soon. Because even though the clock always tends to strike midnight, the Big Dance is not the same without our princess.

So one of the biggest debates of the season happened because of Baylor and Alabama, and the wildly publicized cases of James Nnaji and Charles Bediako. What made it worse is that the overall result ended up being different.

James Nnaji was selected 31st in the NBA Draft by Detroit before being traded to Charlotte and New York. But although he played in the Summer League for both the Hornets and the Knicks, he never signed an official NBA contract and ended up playing in Europe for FC Barcelona. Because he was within the five year window of high school graduation and he never enrolled in college, he was allowed to join Baylor mid-season with 4 years of eligibility.

This then prompted Bediako to try to return mid-season to Alabama, where he played a few games while his lawsuit against the NCAA played out in the court system. The difference for Bediako was he played 2 years at Alabama before entering the 2023 NBA Draft. He went undrafted, but managed to sign a two-way contract with the San Antonio Spurs before playing on multiple teams in the G League. The NCAA won their case that he was ineligible because he left school to enter the NBA Draft and signed an NBA contract. It didn’t matter that he didn’t play for the Spurs – he stayed in the draft and signed a contract with an NBA team, so he was ineligible.

The NCAA got one of these two cases correct. Bediako knew the rules – he stayed in the NBA Draft knowing that would end his eligibility. The second he stayed in the draft and signed a professional contract, his college basketball career should have been over.

But Nnaji should have been ineligible as well. He signed up for the NBA draft and played in the Summer League. You can argue that he didn’t sign a two-way contract like Bediako, but that is because he went back to play with FC Barcelona.

To be fair, the differences are complicated. Many argue that people who play in the EuroLeague should also be considered professionals and not be allowed to play. I would have agreed with that except for two problems.

• Basketball overseas is set up a little differently where they have “club” youth teams. So several players who eventually had played in the top portion of the EuroLeague were since they got called up for some games by the senior team of the club were literally still in high school.
• The highest paid player in the EuroLeague was Vasilje Micic, who made $5.6 million playing for Hapoel Tel Aviv. While not disclosed, the belief is that AJ Dybantsa was the highest paid college basketball player through NIL and revenue sharing agreements – at $7 million.

It is hard to make the argument that EuroLeague players should be considered professional basketball players (which they are) when a player can make more money playing college basketball.

The issue isn’t that EuroLeague players are considered professionals – since they clearly are. The issue is that we no longer can call college basketball players amateurs when they can make millions in NIL.

So, the NCAA announced two days that they are going to vote on establishing a rule that if you enter the NBA draft, you lose your eligibility (vs. the part with Bediako where you also signed a contract). To me, this is too little, too late. It also seems to be surrounding an executive order by Trump to limit players to finish their four years of eligibility within 5 years.

Well – if the executive order becomes law, I can’t tell the NCAA to not follow it – but I think that is wrong. But I have different rules that people will also not agree with.

So, part of the complaint is that college sports is supposed to be about athletes also getting a college education. There used to be a commercial from 2011 that I agreed with where the NCAA tried to sell the reality, that out of over 480,000 college athletes, the majority of them are going to go professional in something other than sports.

Lets look at the math – there are 365 Division I college basketball teams. Lets say that with each team having some redshirts and walk-ons, that a team has 15 players. That means they are approximately 5,475 college basketball players.

There are 32 NBA teams – meaning room for 480 professional players. That means that even if every single NBA player retired this year, 92% of the college basketball ranks would still not make it to the pros. Obviously, the number is probably over 99% since those NBA players are not suddenly retiring.

For every rare case like Yaxel Lendeborg, who won the ability to play a 6th year of college basketball because some of it happened in junior colleges, there is another player, likely at some mid-major school, who is going to get their masters degree thanks to that medical redshirt giving them a sixth year to be in school.

So, here is my radical opinion on how to change college basketball eligibility.

First – we are going to remove the belief that these athletes are not professionals where their employee is the school. We are going to force the money back into the universities – all NIL needs to be made public and it will be considered part of a salary cap that each team is allowed – which will be set based off a reasonable revenue sharing level. Teams do not need to pay up to the salary cap – many of the mid-majors will not be able to. But we will also not allow some Big 10 or SEC school to spend $40 million to try to win a championship.

Athletes have one year after their high school graduation to enroll in a college. If you are part of the EuroLeague system, you will not get punished for being a high schooler that is talented. But if you stay with your EuroLeague team for more than a year after your graduation, you decided to play professionally in Europe instead of getting your college degree.

Players get the chance to sign immediately with an agent, and they get to put their name into the NBA Draft. But if you put your name in the draft and you get drafted, your college eligibility is done. It is not as strict as the NCAA suggestion that if you keep your name in the draft, you are ineligible no matter what. This will remove the mistake of a young adult being told by everyone they are the greatest just to have the reality that they are not ready for the NBA. But you don’t get it both ways – you don’t get to go to the NBA and then come back if you are unsuccessful.

Now, the parts that people will not like or agree with.

A player has 4 full years of eligibility – these 4 years only count at the Division I level. As long as they are continuing toward their degree, they can be on scholarship to play. If a player gets injured, they can stay for a 6th year. If a player goes to junior college, they can stay for a 6th year.

However, you can only collect NIL payments or revenue sharing payments for the first 5 years you are at college (including those junior college years). If you are staying for a sixth year, you are staying because you are trying to get your degree and not because you can make $5 million in college like Yaxel Lindeborg supposedly is making. If you are going to stay in college past 5 years, it is because you are trying to get your degree and not because you can make more money playing for Kentucky than you can for a EuroLeague team.

If you complete your bachelors degree at a school and use up your last year of eligibility, that school will give you a full scholarship to go after your masters/doctorate degree (but you must stay at that school for that degree).

Colleges can sign players to multi-year contracts. If the player agrees to this, they must stay at that school to honor that contract if they would like to still make NIL money. They can choose to transfer if the school is not a good fit for them, but they will then not get paid the remaining amount of the contract, and they will not be able to collect NIL at the new school for the period of the contract. This is intended to stop players from becoming free agents year after year in the transfer portal. Basically, you can go into the transfer portal as often as you want – and immediately play at your new school. But you can’t break a contract – if you signed a 3 year deal, you can’t break it looking for more money because you did awesome your freshman year at some mid-major.

Up to this point, I don’t think anything I have is too controversial. You get 5 years to collect NIL (if you redshirt a year) – and in that time, you get a degree. If you want to continue to further your education, and because of injuries or being in junior college, you still have eligibility left, you can keep playing – but then you are doing it for the degree, not for the millions of NIL money. And all the money becomes public – none of this nonsense about they might be making $2 million or $5 million – everyone will know what the market values are.

Here is my final and most controversial spot. If a school signs a player in the transfer portal, they will also owe the school the player is leaving the money they sign for. This extra cost will not count against your team’s salary cap, but if you pay Yaxel Lindeborg $5 million to leave UAB and come to Michigan, then Michigan needs to give UAB $5 million to find a new player. This is how we help out the mid-major programs. We will not stop the power conferences from buying all the star players in the transfer portal after they played 2 seasons in the mid-major and got them to the tournament. But we are going to give that mid-major the money that they can then go and find a reasonable replacement so they can stay competitive.

Most of that will never happen – but I think that is where college basketball needs to go. We are never going to be able to go back to just scholarships. But education matters. 99% of the college basketball players are not going to go to the NBA – giving these young athletes the opportunity to make some money while getting a degree that they can go pro in makes sense. We have to stop players from staying students forever because college basketball is profitable for them. But we need to allow players to leverage their athletic skill to get a degree to do something else with their career. And if we want to keep everyone competitive, you will eventually need a salary cap. Or otherwise, the Big 10 and SEC will take their massive football contracts and be able to pay players three times the amount they can make anywhere else.

Well – so much for frantic blogging – I got so caught up with that post that the NCAA Championship has begun!!!!!! Good luck to Michigan and UConn – hoping it will be an outstanding, close and memorable game.

My old age and need for sleep has made me miss out on several things that I wanted to chime into. So, I guess I have a couple hours. To be fair, I could do my grade the conferences after the tournament is over (or any of my other rants), but there is something that doesn’t seem right about that.

I have already given you all my thoughts on the game. We have two extremely well coached teams with outstanding defenses playing for the National Championship.

• The Lunatic being a Purdue alum would love to see the Big 10 finally end the narrative that they can’t win a national championship.
• Watching Michigan beat an incredible Arizona team by 18 makes me believe that they have to be the favorite.
• Watching UConn come back to beat Duke (one of the three teams that beat the Wolverines) makes me believe that you certainly can’t be surprised if UConn wins because they are a team of destiny.
• Knowing that Dan Hurley has led the Huskies to win two of the last three national championships also makes me nervous that the Big 10 drought will continue.
• The Lunatic used to have a theory that champions rise to the top. In past years, you typically watch as the upsets of the first round lead to the regular season and conference tournament champions of the power conferences heading to the Elite 8 and Final Four. Michigan won the Big 10 regular season, while UConn got shocked by a game by St. John’s in the Big East.
• Of course, we all know that the Soccer Ball has picked the Huskies.
• At the end of the day, I suspect that like in the Arizona/Michigan game, the team that controls the paint and wins the rebounding battle will win the game. To beat Michigan, you have to be more physical than them. UConn can certainly accomplish that goal, but obviously, so was Arizona and the Wolverines dominated them.

So, we have rapid fire ranting from the Lunatic – we will see how many things I can get through.

Here we go!!! Super excited – the championship game is 2 hours away!!!!

So I saw two stories after the Michigan / Arizona game that I thought showed some great thinking by the Michigan coach. I suspect that someone has done it before, but the results couldn’t have worked out better.

First, there was a video on social media showing that May brought his team out to Michigan’s football stadium, the Big House, put a mobile hoop up in the field, and had a shooting practice so that his team could get used to shooting on a basket with the site-lines of a football stadium. The Wolverines went 12-27 from three-point range for 44 percent (which was 8 percent better than any of the other 3 teams). Could have just been a coincidence but the practice on a football field likely helped.

The other thing was how Elliot Cadeau played. Cadeau started the game 2 for 14 from the field before hitting his last three shots, as he would drive to the basket and the float these wild shots high off the backboard that had no chance of going in. I kept thinking that I was really impressed how Michigan kept getting the rebound and scoring – bailing out the wild shots.

Except the shots weren’t wild at all – they were by design. May realized that he could not lob the ball in over Arizona’s athletic front court to score in the paint like the Wolverines normally did. So Cadeau would drive hard to the basket, draw the help defense from Arizona’s big men, and then he would lob the ball high off the board knowing that the Michigan forward who was originally guarded by the player who helped would be wide open to get the rebound and lay it back in. Cadeau had 10 official assists, but he intentionally missed several shots to put his teammates in position to score.

Arizona had lost only twice all season, a four point road loss to Kansas and a three point overtime loss to Texas Tech. They were always in every game because of their amazing defense in the paint. And Dusty May made multiple decisions that prepared his team well, leading to an 18 point victory.

Please don’t take this to mean that I think Michigan has the best coach. Dan Hurley is an incredible basketball coach. Ilinois had the 2nd best offense in the country. They had been only held to under 70 points twice before the Final Four. Houston in the Sweet 16 held them to 65. And the other was in the regular season when they faced UConn in Madison Square Garden – where they scored 61.

And UConn came in prepared and held that efficient offense to 62 points again on their way to a nine point victory. They knew Illinois would make adjustments from their first game. They knew Illinois had multiple offensive weapons. It didn’t matter – they shut them down for a second time when no one but Houston’s highly ranked defense could do it.

But no one is debating Hurley’s greatness, and the UConn coach has two national championships to prove it. But I have heard grumblings about how May played a ton of money in the transfer portal and is now watching as that money leads them to a title.

Yaxel Lendeborg was certainly one of the biggest prizes of the portal, but he was also a starter for mid-major UAB. Eliot Cadeau was considered too turnover-prone and just a mediocre shooter when he decided to leave North Carolina. Center Aday Mara was playing 13 minutes off the bench for UCLA. Forward Morez Johnson Jr was playing 17 minutes off the bench for Illinois.1

Its easy to say that Dusty May bought a team in the portal after watching Michigan’s run of dominance. But what he got out of the portal was a guy dominating a mid-major conference, a point guard that a blue-blood program no longer wanted, and two bench players. And Dusty May turned them into a team that is winning most of their games by double digits.

You might hear that the Michigan coach is successful because he won the transfer portal – but he also has improved the game of all those 4 transfers. He is an outstanding coach. He might not beat Dan Hurley tonight, but that doesn’t diminish what he has accomplished. And Hurley might not beat the Wolverines buzz-saw tonight, and that doesn’t diminish what he has accomplished.

We are lucky enough to be watching two of the best coaches in college basketball tonight – don’t let any grumbling from the media make you believe anything different.

The NCAA did something I liked on Sunday – since they own the NIT tournament, they had a championship afternoon on Sunday where they had the Division III championship, the Division II championship, and the NIT all at the same court.

And that led to a fun day of championships.

First, you could not beat the Division III championship ending. Mary Washington (from Fredericksburg, VA) led 73-70 over Emery when Emery’s Ethan Fauss hit a three-pointer with 12 seconds left. Without a timeout, the Eagles got the ball into leading scorer Kye Robinson who drove the baseline and put up a wild floater that missed everything – except the outstretched hands of teammate Colin Mitchell who made the layup as time expired to win Mary Washington the Division III championship! Special call-out to Elizabeth’s sister Mary-Kate who is alum from Mary Washington – go Eagles!!!!

The Division II championship did not have the same drama. Gannon’s Pace Prosser led the way scoring 28 points to lead Gannon to an 84-61 victory over Lander – congratulations to Gannon on winning the Division II championship.

On FOX sports, the Crown championship finished up between Oklahoma and West Virginia in Las Vegas – I sadly didn’t realize how close it was until I realized it was in overtime. I tuned in just in time to see the Sooners to score the first 6 points in overtime just to watch as the Mountaineers’ Honor Huff hit a three-pointer and Jasper Floyd hit two three-pointers (with the last one being to take the lead with under 2 minutes to play). So Oklahoma scored the first 6, and West Virginia scored the last 13 as West Virginia claimed the Crown championship – congratulations to West Virginia.

Finally, we had the NIT championship and it was a double reminder that no lead is safe in March and April. Auburn had a 21 point lead in the first half and looked like they would run away, But Tulsa came storming back.

And with about a minute left, Tulsa’s Ade Popoola hit a three-pointer to give them a 76-71 lead. Auburn’s Tahaad Pettiford hit a three pointer to cut the lead to two with about 45 seconds left, but Tulsa drained the shot clock, got the ball into Tyler Behrend and he got fouled in the lane. Behrend would hit both free throws and take a 4 point lead.

Auburn tried to get a quick shot but was forced to throw up a wild three-pointer – Elijah Freeman got the rebound and tried to at least cut the lead to two and was fouled on the layup attempt. But Freeman made only one of the free-throws. Tulsa probably just needs to get the ball in and hit a free throw and they are the NIT comeback champions!

Except they couldn’t get the ball in – Auburn’s defense forced a five second violation. And on their in-bounds play, they got the ball to Kevin Overton in the corner who drained the three-pointer to send the game to overtime. Auburn’s 21 point lead became a Tulsa 5 point lead. And then to prove the point that no lead is safe, Auburn sent the game to overtime.

And in overtime, Tahaad Pettiford and Kevin Overton stayed hot, leading the Auburn Tigers to a 92-86 overtime victory – congratulations to Auburn on winning the NIT championship.

So Sunday saw a game end on a buzzer beater, two overtimes, and a 21 point lead disappear just for that team to make their own late rally to win. Such a fun day of basketball.

Only one more game left – hopefully Michigan and UConn play an exciting game like the ones we got to watch on Sunday!

Well, the golf ball did know a decent amount – if I had made the tie-breaker whether or not I beat 50 vs. simply giving the tie to the underdog, the golf ball would have got both the games right. I think it missed on both over/unders so that didn’t work as well.

But today, it rained in Richmond so I needed a different way to predict the championship game. Charlie and I used to do a “Ball Don’t Lie” game of HORSE, but he is obviously at college (and apparently so is the basketball).

So, I thought to myself, I would play the College Hoops 2K8 game I had on the Playstation-3. This was a big stretch for me since I had no clue where the controllers for the console were, but after a hunt, I found everything. I thought I would play 2 games as Michigan, and 2 games as Connecticut – and then just combine the results. I noticed as I was trying to get through the start game screens that my last saved game was from 2016. So, I basically had not played the game in 10 years. But when I did play, I tended to win – so I figured what would happen is I would win all 4 games, and then I would pick the team that won by the most points.

So, I set up the game that had Michigan vs. Connecticut (apparently UConn had a slightly better team in 2008 but wasn’t concerned). Then watched as UConn scored the first 15 points. I couldn’t even remember how to shoot a free throw and so the game timed me out and bricked the shot badly. So, once I figured out the main buttons, I re-started the game.

The first game saw UConn winning by 24 points. So, I switched to playing for UConn – Michigan won by 18 points. So I switched back to Michigan and at least only lost by 9 points – where I stumbled across finally being able to intentionally pass to a player instead of just letting the computer pass it randomly to someone. At this point, I noticed the women’s championship game had started so I didn’t even bother losing again as the Huskies – that simply felt wrong to predict based on the computer beating the hell out of me and me getting better and better each game so it would likely favor whoever I played last.

After watching UCLA beat South Carolina for the women’s championship, I noticed that the rain had stopped – so I thought I still need some type of random silly method to pick the game. Anyone following the blog knows that if the Lunatic had to pick between the Big 10 champion and Dan Hurley’s Huskies, the Lunatic’s heart will side with the Big 10.

To be fair to Dan Hurley and the Huskies, the Lunatic probably would always favor the Big 10 champion – regardless of team. But Hurley is certainly not one of my favorite coaches – amazingly talented coach that I think needs to figure out when to be so intense, and when it is better for him to control himself. And to also be fair, I love a couple stories that I have read about his luck charms such as his lucky suit (that is coming apart at the seams) and holy beads (that his wife had to go back to the hotel room to get when he forgot them). Apparently, Dan Hurley believes in Karma – and so as much as I don’t like how much he yells at the officials, I can appreciate someone who believes in Karma.

But I digress. I needed a quick way to predict the game (by the way, the current line is Michigan by 7.5 and the totals are 144.5). And I had no basketball – because we know the Ball Doesn’t Lie. But the Lunatic as a long time soccer coach still had a soccer ball – it would have to do.

The Lunatic has to say, it was weird shooting a soccer ball at the basket. It felt smaller and lighter (not sure if that is true but it seemed that way. It also didn’t help that there was a huge puddle from the thunderstorms by the basket that if I missed, the soccer ball would get soaked and slip out of my hands. But that was all irrelevant – the Lunatic knows the soccer ball will help predict the game.

How the game would work was the following – I would shoot 10 free throws and 5 three-pointers. And then the other team would shoot. There would be 4 quarters. To start, since Michigan was the favorite, they would get to shoot last. However, whatever team was leading at the end of the quarter would get to shoot last in the next quarter.

So – to predict the over/under, I did a practice round to see what my average should be (since I had no clue what shooting the soccer ball would be like). I hit 7 of 10 free throws, and 1 of 5 three-pointers – so if I make the free throws 2 and the three-points 3, that is 17 points for a team in a quarter.

First quarter, the Huskies struggled from the line – only going 5 for 10 – but they hit a 2nd three-pointer to get to 16. The Wolverines also hit 2 three-pointers, but had a two point lead thanks to making an extra free throw.

Both teams continued to struggle from the line – only going 5 for 10. But this time, the Wolverines only hit one of their three-pointers while the Huskies hit two. The Huskies had a 1 point half-time lead (and took over getting to go last).

Things didn’t get better in the third quarter. I started to get tired. The Wolverines only hit 5 free throws, but all 5 of their three-pointers missed. The Huskies only made 1 three-pointer, but they hit 6 of 10 from the line, so they now had a commanding 6 point lead going into the final quarter. They also had the advantage of knowing what they would have to do.

Things unraveled for Michigan. The Lunatic’s bad form worked OK with a basketball, but started to push all his shots to the left. He had the right distance, but kept watching as the ball went off the left side of the rim. Sadly, when the Wolverines needed me the most, I only hit 3 of 10 free throws. It looked like it might be over. But somehow being tired and realizing that he kept missing left, he compensated. And the Lunatic for the first time hit 3 of 5 from three-point range. That got to a more respectable 15 points for the quarter. At least UConn would have to hit some shots to win.

And then the crazy thing happened. UConn made the first 5 free throws to guarantee the win. And then they didn’t stop, they hit the next 5 free throws. The Lunatic finally realizing how to compensate to the left led to a perfect 10 for 10 from the line. He then hit the next two from three-point range, just to rub it in. When I was lucky to hit half my shots in any quarter, UConn hit 12 in a row before finally missing (to the left). Just to end in style, the Lunatic did hit the last three-pointer as well for an amazing 29 point quarter. UConn ran away with it.

The rally wasn’t enough to cover the total. It fell 4 short – so the soccer ball says to take the under. And since UConn won, I don’t have to decide whether or not to count the points or not – the soccer ball is picking the UConn Huskies to win.

So, there you go. If the Lunatic picked with his heart on who would win straight up, he would take Michigan. If he was picking purely on statistical analysis, here are some of the relevant stats:

• Kenpom has Michigan as a 10 point favorite. But I believe his efficiency measures are based on 100 possessions – where most games are about 70 possessions (right about where Vegas set the line around 7 points).
• UConn lost to Arizona by 4 in the regular season, obviously Michigan beat them by 18 on Saturday.
• UConn beat Duke by 1 in the Elite 8 – Michigan lost to Blue Devils by 5 in the regular season.
• UConn beat three Big 10 teams in the tournament – UCLA by 16, MSU by 4, and Illinois by 9. Michigan beat UCLA by 30, Illinois by 14, and MSU by 12 and 10.
• Michigan beat Villanova in the regular season by 28. UConn beat them by 10 and 8.

So, I think most of the statistics lean towards Michigan, but to be honest, 7.5 is a lot of points for a championship game. I totally understand Michigan has won all their games by double digits, but UConn won all 5 of their games as well. Still – I think they lean towards Michigan.

But none of that matters because we all know the Ball Don’t Lie. And the Ball says take the experience of the UConn Huskies to win their third national championship in 4 years.

So – it looks like Jim Carini will be rooting for the Ball to be correct, and Bill Richter will be rooting for the Lunatic’s heart to be correct.

Fortunately, whatever the Lunatic writes doesn’t really matter. Karma might like to taunt the Lunatic by knocking off his picks one by one as the well-known Lunatic curse haunts anyone that he picks to win, but the Lunatic has no capable way of scoring any more points – his championship game was either Purdue over Duke or Duke over Arizona. So, any random rant the Lunatic writes at this point is irrelevant. Championships are won on the court, not based on imaginary superstitions of a sleep-deprived Lunatic.

Will Michigan end the 26 year drought of the Big 10 and get Dusty May his first ever national championship? Will UConn continue their ownership of March and win for Dan Hurley their third title in four years? We will know in less than 24 hours!!!!!! Tune in at 8:50 pm on TBS, TruTV, or HBO Max as we will crown a national champion tomorrow night!!!!

The Lunatic has to admit, he is struggling a little bit. He is having a hard time trying to figure out what to blog about. Whenever he handicaps the games, he seems to be wrong. He tries to get excited about blogging about the Final Four, and then Michigan blows out Arizona and makes it not that exciting to write about. While I have to admit that I was extremely impressed with how dominating that UConn and Michigan, it doesn’t lead to a lot of blogging content.

Normally I have an article about grading the selection committee and grading the conferences – so that gives me at least something to try to finish. And then I realize, any criticism of the selection committee would be a criticism of myself.

This is the closest that I have got to matching the bracket of the Selection Committee. There were only 10 teams that I did not match the seed – which is crazy accurate for me. But as I looked at it further, I realized it was a lot closer.

I matched up my rankings to the committee’s S-curve. 47 of our 68 teams were within 1 place of each curve, including our top 10 matching exactly. How am I supposed to criticize the Selection Committee when they came up with literally the same ranking as I did.

There were only 3 teams that were more than 4 teams from each other in the S-curves. And interestingly, they were always teams I thought should be better ranked than they were.

• St. John’s (5th seed vs 3rd seed – 18 vs 12 on the S-curve) – the Red Storm outperformed their seed by making the Sweet 16, and giving Duke a challenge in that game.
• Texas A&M (10th seed vs 9th seed – 40 vs 34 on the S-curve) – the Aggies upset St. Mary’s and were the only 10 seed to win their game.
• UMBC (16th seed vs 15th seed – 66 vs 62 on the S-curve) – UMBC lost in the play-in game to Howard.

So, in 2 of the 3 cases, the Lunatic might have been right that the team should be seeded better than they were.

If we get more aggressive and look at the teams that were differences. There were 4 teams the Lunatic felt should be seeded better, and there were 6 teams the Committee seeded better.

LUNATIC’S RANKINGS (2 games above expectations based on Selection Committee seed). I would argue that I was correct twice and wrong twice.

• St. John’s (2 wins vs expected 1) – only 5 seed to get to the Sweet 16
• Texas A&M (1 win vs expected 0) – beat St. Mary’s before losing to Houston – only 10 seed to advance.
• North Dakota St – lost by 25 to Michigan St
• UMBC – lost to Howard

SELECTION COMMITTEE (1 game below expectations) – I would argue they were correct on St. Louis and wrong on Gonzaga and SMU.

• Gonzaga (1 win vs expected 2) – lost to Texas in the 2nd round.
• Kansas (1 win vs expected 2) – first 4 seed to lose (although to be fair it was a 2 point loss to St. John’s)
• St. Louis (1 win vs expected 0) – Beat Georgia before losing to Michigan
• SMU – lost to Miami OH
• Troy – lost by 29 to Nebraska (worst of the 13 seeds)
• Queens – lost by 33 to Purdue (although to be fair, only Furman of the 15 seeds lost by less than 30 points)

All this to say that basically they could have seeded St. John’s and Texas A&M better and Gonzaga worse. And I could say that SMU probably shouldn’t have been in the tournament – but to be fair, Oklahoma, Auburn, San Diego State or Indiana also might have lost to Miami OH in the First Four game – after all, the Redhawks were 31-1 entering the tournament.

In fact, the biggest gripe (other than St. John’s) is probably geographic. While I am sure that some of the bracketing rules have been relaxed thanks to the mega-conferences, I still liked the rule that a conference champion should not have to play anyone from their conference unless there are 8 teams.

The biggest breaking of this rule was for the Big East – where UConn and St. John’s were both put in the East and if Duke hadn’t beat the Red Storm they would have played each other for the Regional Final. With the Big East only having three teams, it feels like the top two teams from the conference could have been split up.

The other weird matchup that felt unfair was that Florida was the number one seed in the South, got put at a geographic disadvantage in the Sweet 16 against Houston, the 2 seed, and then had the 4th placed SEC team, Vanderbilt (the team that upset them in the SEC tournament) in their path for the Sweet 16. Of course, the Big 10 made sure that didn’t matter as Iowa upset Florida and Nebraska upset Vanderbilt – but it seemed like the committee stacked things against the Gators.

If I am going to get nit-picky, I could also say that they stacked Duke’s region, if you look at UConn, Michigan State, Kansas, and St. John’s all waiting for them. But other than St. John’s being in the same region as UConn, the other teams might have been the right teams based on closest geography and other conference bracketing conflicts. For example, Michigan was in the Midwest and Purdue was sent West – so with Illinois and Michigan State being on the 3 line, they were supposed to be placed if possible in the East and South (which they were).

So, the Selection Committee did incredible. I could maybe argue that SMU didn’t deserve to be in the tournament, but I am not sure I can say that any of the other teams they were considering deserved it more. I could argue about St. John’s, but they still were able to make the Sweet 16. I could argue about geography, but at the end of the day, if the best team is from your conference, you were eventually going to have to beat them to get to the championship game.

So, the Selection Committee gets an A+. I can nit-pick the bracket but at the end of the day, I think everything was fairly seeded and with conferences getting 8-10 teams in, it can be really difficult to put teams in the perfect region. They did an amazing job and we ended up with a fantastic tournament.