It has been a game of runs – but right now, South Carolina is on the most recent one. Three-pointers from Bree Hill and Tessa Johnson, and South Carolina’s defense has taken over.

Clark made a nice layup with about 4:44 to cut the lead to 2, but the Gamecocks would finish the 3rd quarter on a 11-4 run

10 minutes away from declaring the women’s national champion!!!

Iowa jumped out to a 10-0 lead to start the game. But South Carolina started off the second quarter on a 7-0 run to tie the game.

The stars have done what you would expect. Iowa’s Caitlin Clark had 21 points in the first half. Kamilla Cardoso had 11 points for South Carolina.

There have been a couple keys. Raven Johnson has played incredible defense on Clark in the second quarter, holding the star to 3 points in the second quarter after a hot start. This also included a steal at the end of the half as Clark was trying to run the clock out that led to a layup to make it 49-46.

South Carolina has dominated the boards – they already have 12 offensive rebounds, giving them multiple extra chances.

But maybe the biggest story is the South Carolina bench, as Sania Feagin, Milaysia Fulwiley and Tessa Johnson have outscored the Iowa bench 22-0.

South Carolina also has scored the first 6 points of the second half – so Iowa will need to do something to stop the Gamecocks’ momentum.

I have to admit – sleep took over last night. I had all these plans to blog all Sunday. And then I slept a good chunk of the day away. It was so nice to sleep.

So I am behind on my blog but excited for the women’s championship game!!!!

Caitlin Clark will try to cement her legacy by adding the one thing that has alluded her.

South Carolina will try to go undefeated while avenging their only loss in the last 2 seasons – a Final 4 loss to the Hawkeyes.

We have the player of the year against the most dominant team in women’s basketball. Should be a great game!!! And tip-off is minutes away!!!

Alabama gave it a decent try to stop the defending champions. Both teams went on 7-0 runs at some point to start the second half. With a little under 13 minutes to play, Grant Nelson hit a jumper to tie the game at 56.

But as the Huskies do, that was as close as Alabama was going to get. Stephon Castle got fouled after an offensive rebound and got two from the line, and then scored again on a jumper. Then, Samson Johnson got a dunk and Alex Karaban got a layup to quickly spread the lead to 8.

At this point, the teams would keep trading baskets to about the 3 minute mark as Karaban hit a three-pointer to make the lead 11, just to watch Mark Sears hit a super deep three-pointer to cut the lead back to 8.

Then, Donovan Clingan wrapped up the game. Tristen Newton found Clingan down low for a dunk to extend the lead to 10. Then, as Grant Nelson drove to the basket, Clingan blocked the shot to stop the Tide. And on the next possession Cam Spencer found Clingan in the post again for another dunk.

Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer would finish the game off with two three-pointers, and the Huskies won 86-72.

Alabama simply could not keep up their hot shooting from three-point range, and Clingan’s 4 blocks on defense made it difficult for the Tide to score points in the lane. Meanwhile, the Tide simply had no answer for the Huskies as all 5 starters scored in double digits, led by Castle’s 21 and Clingan’s 18 points.

It took a little bit longer than normal, but the Huskies still found a way to extend the lead to double digits by the end of the game. And now, they are one game away from defending their championship.

The only team left in their path in Zach Edey’s Purdue Boilermakers. One team that had everyone come back in order to try to get redemption from last year’s tournament. One team trying to keep what they won from last year’s tournament.

These teams have been on a collision course all season. UConn started the pre-season polls at 6th while the Boilers started at 3rd. UConn would only improve, staying in the top 5 all season including holding the top spot for 7 weeks. The Boilers never fell farther than 4th (after their loss to Northwestern) as they held the top spot for 5 weeks. So, if you exclude the pre-season poll, the two teams were at the top of the poll for 12 of the 19 weeks and the only 2 teams to stay in the top 5 for all 19 weeks. It should be a great championship game as both teams have proven they are the best two teams in college basketball.

The Lunatic will be excited to cheer on his Boilers on Monday night as they face the defending champion Huskies.

Alabama is doing everything possible to try to beat the UConn Huskies, and yet they are still down 4.

The pace of the game is exactly what Alabama wants. It has been a fast-paced hectic game with both teams running the ball down the court.

Alabama even jumped out to a 5 point lead with about 11 minutes in the half when Rylan Griffen made a three-pointer. But the Huskies quickly came back, running hard off defensive rebounds including a pretty upcourt pass by Tristen Newton to Donovan Clingan for a massive dunk. The teams kept trading baskets to about 5 minutes when Alabama’s Latrell Wrightsell Jr hit a three to give the Tide a lead just for the Huskies to come down the court and find Tristen Newton for a three to take the lead back.

The Huskies extended the lead to 7 as Cam Spencer hit a three-pointer and Donovan Clingan made a layup. But Mark Sears would hit a 3 pointer from the corner and an impressive scoop shot around Clingan at the buzzer to cut the Huskies lead to 44-40.

Alabama is doing everything they can at the moment. They actually shot 8-11 (72.7%) from three point range, and have the pace to be exactly what they want. But they have not had an answer for Stephon Castle who has 13 points.

It should be an exciting second half – here we go!!!

There were tons of nerve-wracking moments for the Lunatic. The Boilers jumped out to an early lead as Fletcher Loyer hit a three-pointer and Trey Kaufman-Renn hit a shot in the lane and a couple of free throws. But Purdue’s Braden Smith had a very uncharacteristic game – starting with 2 over and back turnovers. And NC State would settle down from the early start, led by DJ Horne.

There was then an unfortunate moment for the Wolfpack as Michael O’Connell off a steal drove to the basket and fell injuring his hamstring. I hated seeing it as I have remembered so many times where a Purdue player like Robbie Hummel went down with a non-contact injury. O’Connell did come back a couple of times but he was clearly not himself.

However, Jayden Taylor came in and played excellent defense. As did Ben Middlebrooks on Zach Edey as they managed to steal the ball from Edey multiple times without fouling him.

DJ Horne hit a couple of baskets to cut the lead to 3 points late in the first half, but Fletcher Loyer hit a huge three-pointer to end the half and give the Boilers a 6 point lead.

Lance Jones hit a three-pointer to lead the scoring for the 2nd half and the lead was back out to 9 points. But once again, Horne kept the Wolfpack in the game with a few baskets. This led into a very nervous time for the Lunatic as neither team could score for the next 2 1/2 minutes. Purdue would turn the ball over, but NC State couldn’t capitalize. Both teams were playing very solid defense.

Then, Zach Edey found Mason Gillis for a three pointer, and Braden Smith found Lance Jones for a three pointer. And the lead was back to double digits.

DJ Horne continued to try to chip away, as a jumper with 8 minutes made it a 49-42 game. But that was as close as the Wolfpack would get.

Over the next 5 minutes, Purdue would go on a 14-1 run, including two three pointers by Fletcher Loyer and Braden Smith that put the game out of reach.

Zach Edey still led the Boilers with 20 points as so much of Purdue’s offense went through him, and Edey had a couple huge blocks on defense to keep the Wolfpack at bay. But it was a huge game from Lance Jones and Fletcher Loyer, who managed to hit some key shots at moments when the Boilers had gone cold and you could send NC State was gaining some momentum.

I think the impressive thing was that Purdue found a different way to win. NC State only sent Edey to the line once. Purdue turned the ball over 16 times. Braden Smith only got 3 points.

But the Boilers won this game on the defensive side. DJ Horne was spectacular, scoring 21 points. But they really caused DJ Burns trouble when he only got 8 points – and the other 3 starters could only score 5 more points. The Wolfpack only were able to shoot 36.8% from the field (and only 26.3% from three-point range).

It was encouraging that one of Purdue’s stars could have a rough game, they had a ton of turnovers, and yet, they still found a way to win with defense. The Boilermakers are heading to the NCAA Championship game!!!!! And the Lunatic is so very happy!!!!

The Lunatic is going so crazy right now!!! I can not even express words that show how happy I am!!!!

It was not the prettiest of games but Purdue won 63-50 and is going to get to play on Monday night for the National Championship!

I will compose myself shortly to write about the game but for right now, I simply am going to enjoy this moment!!!!

They did in a couple minutes what I tried to do in my unwritten stories blog.

– Purdue – we are a team looking for redemption

– NC State – we are a team of destiny

– Alabama – we are a team who is writing our own story

– Connecticut – we are a team defending our title

So very excited!!! So very nervous!!! I want to see Purdue win so badly!!!! I have my lucky Purdue shirt! I have my cherry coke zero in my old Purdue cup that used to help me get through late night study sessions with unhealthy amounts of soda!!!

Here we go!!!!

I had a plan – I was going to write all day. I never made it outside to exercise. Maybe tomorrow.

My blog posts took me more time to write than I had hoped because I had a few more pieces I wanted to write. But they will take a ton of time and research so they will have to wait until Sunday.

The one I will promise to eventually do is my Grading the Conferences. There are a bunch of articles that I see in the media that I try to do my own versions – of which, this is one of them.

I will also tell you one that I have seen ESPN do that I refuse to do because I hate. Each round, they do a Reseeding the Final Four / Elite Eight / Sweet 16, etc. I get what they are thinking, but at the end of the day, I think it is terribly unfair and it leads to choices that I think is unrealistic.

I know they are trying to identify what team is playing well at this very second and re-rank their chances. And they almost always read as the top 4 seeds still around are now the 1 seeds, the next top 4 seeds are now the 2 seeds, with a couple of changes simply so it is not just moving the teams down the board and they can claim they switched things up.

Why do we need to do this? Sure, it gives you a chance to try to correct a mistake by the committee on a team that you thought should have been 1 seed higher or lower.

But it normally leads to boring reads that have a horrible chance to be wrong. Just as an example from ESPN’s/

Alabama was ranked 14th of 16 in the Sweet 16. They were ranked 8th of 8 in the Elite 8. They were ranked 4th of 4 in the Final 4.

It makes it sound like ESPN simply doesn’t believe that Alabama should be winning any of these games.

If we did a decent job of seeding the teams to begin with, the rank ordering shouldn’t change because of a couple games. Can’t we just celebrate the fact that they pulled an upset to get where they are, and enjoy the Cinderella run that the team might be on? We can write one or two articles about how the tournament was seeded and then let the teams show that championships are won on the court and not on paper.

I know that the media needs material to last three weeks. I guess I do a lot of the same things because I like to have blogging material as well. But I still don’t know why I open the article every time and then go, why did I waste my time seeing that they still think that the #1 seeds are still 1 seeds.

Well – only 20 minutes until the games. Time for the Lunatic to rest his fingers for a little bit and possibly lose his voice instead. The Final Four is here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Enjoy the games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Lunatic went from down after the first two rounds to up big in his imaginary handicapping. So, the Lunatic is playing with imaginary house money!!!! It is once again a reminder to me that I probably should not try to rank my bets – once I started to simply bet the max amount to catch up, I went on a charge. With only 6 possible bets left to make, I only need to win one of them to have a winning tournament. And of course, if things go badly tonight, I could always simply bet the lowest tier of bets to stay ahead. Probably won’t do that – because that is no fun (and its all imaginary). But still pleased that I ended up ahead this year. My Final Four picks are on the Handicapping site – respect the streaks!!!!