Stomp The Lunatic

UCLA started off the 4th quarter with a 31-28 lead, in what had been a very physical, defensive struggle. I will say while I like letting the players play, it felt like there was a lot being not called in both semi-final matchups.

The Bruins started the quarter fired up. Lauren Betts got fouled and extended the lead to 5, Kiki Rice hit a three-pointer from the win to extend the lead to 8, and Gabriela Jaquez got a layup in the lane to make it a 10 point game on the 7-0 run to start the quarter. With 4 1/2 to play, Gianna Kneepkens hit a deep three-pointer, and it looked like UCLA was comfortably ahead with a 13 point lead.

But we all know there is no comfortable lead in March. Texas’ Jordan Lee made a layup, Aaliyah Crump stole the ball and passed the ball to Lee in the corner for a three-pointer, and the lead was 8.

Lauren Betts would hit a shot in the lane to make it a double digit lead again, but Kyla Oldacre would get fouled and make a free throw, Madison Booker would hit a shot in the lane, and Kyla Oldacre would get open in the lane for a layup, and with 1:45 to play, the lead was down to 5.

Meanwhile, UCLA is having fits just getting the ball in. They probably should have been called for a five-second violation at one point, but the referees kept awarding time-outs right before the violation took place. UCLA tried to drain some clock, but at the end of the possession, Rori Harmon stole the ball, got the ball to Jordan Lee, and her layup cut the lead to 3 with a minute to play.

After needing another time-out to get the ball in, UCLA drained the clock down to 30 seconds, but the Bruins’ Angela Dugalic missed the jumper and Texas’ Madison Booker got the rebound – the Longhorns had the ball and a chance to tie the game.

Booker had been the leading scorer for Texas all year, but had struggled today, and the next play summed up her evening. The star drove the lane, went up for a layup, and UCLA’s star Lauren Betts blocked the shot, and blocked it in a way that she could also recover the rebound.

Texas would foul to try to stop the clock, and eventually Kiki Rice went to the line, and she calmly drained both free throws to make it a 5 point lead with 13 seconds to play. UCLA would play great defense and for Kyla Oldacre into a two-point jumper that missed, and UCLA iced the game from the line.

Congratulations to the UCLA Bruins – I believe that this is their first ever women’s national championship game!!!!! So, we will see UCLA take on South Carolina for the National Championship on Sunday – good luck to both teams!!!

The Connecticut Huskies had a 2 point lead coming into the 2nd half, but South Carolina rose the level of intensity to kick off the third quarter.

With about 5 1/2 left in the third quarter, Agot Makeer hit a jumper from the baseline, and suddenly the Gamecocks were on a 12-2 run, and now had an 8 point lead. The Huskies had won 37 of their 38 games this year by double digits, and yet they now found themselves down 8 points.

During the 3rd quarter interview, Geno Auriemma was clearly irritated at how the game was going, as he told ESPN reporter Holly Rowe, “There were six fouls called that quarter – all of them against us. And they have been beating the s— out of our guys down their the entire game. I’m not making excuses, ’cause we haven’t been able to make a shot. But this is ridiculous. Their coach rants and raves on the sideline and calls the referees some names you don’t want to hear. And now we get 6 to 0, and I got a kid with a ripped jersey, and they go ‘I didn’t see it.’ Come on, man. It’s for a national championship.”

I have certainly seen a coach complain about the refs in these sideline interviews, but I don’t think I have seen a coach say negative things about the other team’s coach. Then, ESPN showed that Strong actually tore her own jersey out of frustration after missing a drive. It all rubbed me the wrong way, but I have never been a fan of Geno Auriemma’s mouth. He is an amazing coach – but the amount of things he has said makes me wish he would stick to coaching.

As you would expect from a team that was undefeated all season and the defending national champion, the Huskies came back as Azzi Fudd hit a three pointer, KK Arnold stole the ball, and got the ball to Bianca Quinonez who was fouled and hit her free throws to cut the lead to 2 points.

But South Carolina’s Maddy McDaniel drove to the hoop and made a layup followed by Agot Makeer drilling a deep three-pointer, and South Carolina was back up by 7 points. The Huskie’s Sara Strong cut the lead to 4 with a three-pointer of her own with about 4 1/2 to play. But Makeer and Madina Okot both made some layups to extend the lead to 8, and South Carolina never looked back.

The game was a lot closer than the 62-48 score, as UConn had to foul in order to try to extend the game, but South Carolina hit their free throws, and the Huskies were missing their shots causing the lead to just grow.

But then things got awkward. With 0.4 seconds left in the game as South Carolina just took a shot clock violation to not run up the score. It looked like the coaches were going to shake hands, but as Staley shook Geno’s hand, he started screaming at her until both of them were screaming at each other. Then, as his team inbounded the ball, he walked off angry off the court.

So, as his team shook hands with South Carolina, the Hall of Fame coach was already half-way back to the locker room. Future interviews didn’t reveal much other than he was upset that Staley left him standing at mid-court during pre-game handshakes as she shook hands and talked with all of his coaching staff. They then eventually shook hands, but that was apparently a crime that required him to scream at Staley like a raving lunatic and then not shake the hands of any of the South Carolina women, who deserved a better show of sportsmanship.

All tournament, Geno has complained about things the NCAA has done that is not helping advance the game of women’s basketball. And yet, when a team finally beats his Huskies and ends their 54 game winning streak, he doesn’t even show those women the courtesy and sportsmanship of congratulating them. Advancing the game can’t just be about the success of UConn. It also needs to be celebrating other teams when they play a flawless game.

That is simply not acceptable. The South Carolina Gamecocks played an incredible game with stifling defense, and have now reached their third straight women’s NCAA championship game. Congratulations to the South Carolina women!!!!

Tonight, the women play their Final Four games in Phoenix, Arizona – all four of the 1 seeds have advanced to tonight’s games, so we should be in for some outstanding basketball by the four best women’s teams in college basketball!!!!

The games are on ESPN – make sure to tune in and watch the women play!!!!

• 7 pm – UConn (38-0) vs South Carolina (35-3) as the schools who have won the last 2 championships and played in last year’s championship find each other in their way to claiming another title!
• 9:30 pm – UCLA (35-1) vs Texas (35-3) as the Bruins will try to get revenge against the only team that beat them this season as both the Longhorns and Bruins try to get a chance to play for the championship!

It should be a great night of basketball!!!! Good luck to all the teams!

So, I mentioned a little about this when I gave some praise to Auburn for accepting their bid to the NIT tournament. I totally get that it had to be frustrating to get invited to the NCAA championships, but they decided to keep playing. And they were rewarded by making it to the NIT semi-finals in Indianapolis. Right now, they have a 7 point lead over Illinois State, while Tulsa won their 30th game of the season by beating New Mexico by 5 points.

The NCAA really screwed up in my opinion. They changed the rules to give more bids to the power conferences – and then only 4 teams from the power conferences showed up. But then they screwed up more. And here is why.

One of the best parts to me about the NIT was if you won your conference’s regular season title, you were guaranteed at least a spot in the NIT. Well – not any more. They changed that rule so that they could give the power conferences more spots. And then when those teams declined the bids, the NCAA decided to simply get the best teams according to their NET rankings.

Meanwhile, the Crown wanted power conference teams, so they invited Minnesota (15-17), Rutgers (14-19) and Creighton (15-17). Ironically, one of those teams will win a post-season game since Rutgers is playing Creighton later tonight.

So, three teams that didn’t even win half their games got a chance to play in the pre-season. So, excluding Belmont – who declined their NIT bid because they had already lost their head coach, these following teams won a share of their regular season championship and did not even get invited to play.

• Central Arkansas (22-12) – Atlantic Sun co-champ
• Austin Peay (22-9) – Atlantic Sun co-champ
• Portland State (20-11) – Big Sky champ
• Merrimack (23-11) – MAAC champ
• Morehead State (20-13) – OVC co-champ
• Bethune-Cookman (17-15) – SWAC champ

The NCAA should fix this and make sure all the regular season champs at least get an invitation to play in the NIT.

I also feel like the teams should need to play if they are invited. I could give more grace to teams when none of the players made any money but their scholarships. But apparently, according to a Sports Illustrated article, it was estimated that between NIL and the revenue-sharing commitments, Indiana spent over $10 million on their basketball team.

If the NCAA has contracts with ESPN and FOX to televise the games for the NIT and Crown tournaments, then I feel if a team is paying their players a combined $10 million dollars, then those players need to play wherever the NCAA sends them. If Indiana gets invited to play in the NIT (and would then get to play all their games in the state of Indiana since they would certainly be given home games until the semi-finals, and the semi-finals are in Indianapolis), then they should have to honor the NCAA’s contracts and play.

Fans of those team would likely still watch. So, they should play. The university is paying $10 million for the team to play – so lets play.

Anyways, it looks like Auburn is going to run away with their game (they have extended their lead over Illinois State to 13 – although we have seen larger comebacks this March) and will play Tulsa for the NIT championship. And I am not even paying attention to the Crown – it is hard for me to care about who wins between two power conference teams that couldn’t win half of their games this season.

The postseason should be a reward where the best remaining teams get invited. If the power conference teams don’t want to play, lets at least invite the regular season champions who didn’t win their conference tournaments.

So, Yaxel Lendeborg is an amazing player, but I hate some of the things that he says. There was a big debate because he mentioned Alabama didn’t recruit him and that Kentucky offered him $7 million to $9 million in NIL to transfer there before he chose Michigan, but he turned it down and took the $5 million offer for the Wolverines since it was a better fit. Both Alabama’s Nate Oats and Kentucky’s Mark Pope denied Yaxel’s claims, but who knows what is the truth.

But his press conference after the Alabama game really angered the Lunatic. To be fair, there are probably more viral things that I should be blogging about, but this for some reason has stuck with me.

Early in the second half, Lendeborg faked a drive to the basket, and literally caused Alabama’s Amari Allen to fall to the ground. Lenderborg made the step-back three and then stayed in his shooting pose over Allen to rub it in.

In the press conference, he said, “Honestly, I kinda felt a little disrespected having a freshman guarding me. I think that’s the first time I’ve made somebody fall since like middle school.”

So, it bothers me that he would basically make it sound like a freshman averaging 11.4 points per game is as bad as a middle-schooler is horribly respectful to Allen. I am sure he was embarrassed enough by falling to the ground. I am sure he was then really upset as Yaxel posed over him to continue to bring attention to it. To then compare him to a middle-schooler is totally uncalled for.

But here is my biggest problem. Lets assume that Nate Oats is going to put his tallest starter on 7’3″ Aday Mara. So, that takes away sophomore Aiden Sherrell. Lets also assume that Oats is not going to throw one of his two guards on him and give up 5-6 inches. So, that leaves the 6’8″ freshman Allen, or the 6’8″ freshman Jemison. Alabama’s starting two forwards are freshmen, so they were going to have to guard him with freshmen.

If Yaxel is going to be offended by playing against 19 year olds, then maybe the 23 year old shouldn’t have transferred to Michigan this year to play his 6th year of college basketball thanks to rules about JUCO eligibility (since he played his first three years at Arizona Western).

Well, Lindeborg is going to end up being disrespected again. Because chances are is that based on the Arizona Wildcats starting lineup, they are either going to put 6’8″ freshman Koa Peat or 6’7″ Ivan Kharchenkov on him. Of course, I suspect if you ask Purdue’s front-line, they will say that the two freshmen are pretty formidable defenders.

If Illinois beats UConn, they might choose to put their smaller forward at 6’6″, Jake Davis, since he is a junior. But more likely, they will put 6’9″ David Mirkovic on him, and of course, Mirkovic is a freshman.

So, Lindeborg will most likely only get the respect he wants if they beat Arizona on Saturday, and end up playing the UConn Huskies – since the two forwards for the Huskies, Alex Karaban and Tarris Reed, Jr are both seniors. Although since Reed will likely get forced to guard Mara and UConn plays three guards, there is a possibility the Huskies have to have their tallest guard sometimes defend Lindeborg – that of course is freshman Braylon Mullins.

The other part that leads to just silliness of all of this is that if Michigan runs a good offense, there will be times where screens and picks will cause the defense to switch defenders. So, it could be that it wasn’t the other teams disrespecting him by putting a freshman on him as much as Michigan’s offensive scheme forcing a freshman to guard him.

Anyways, if you remove the tallest person from each team, since that person likely would have to guard Mara, the options are 4 freshmen, a junior and a senior. So, most likely Yaxel will have to just settle on being disrespected more. What he considers disrespectful is going to end up being a logistical reality.

For those of you who follow the blog, you know that I hate the fact that after any round, you can go onto ESPN or CBS Sports (or your favorite media site) and see some college basketball “analyst” re-rank the remaining teams.

This typically leads to a lot of people flocking to the site to see who they now think will win. Some of them are pretty tame with their changes but some of them go pretty crazy, in what I suspect is an attempt to get views.

The problem I have with this is two-fold. If you do this correctly, you probably aren’t reseeding anything and so it is a boring article. I open the Round of 32 one, and it says the top 4 seeds are Duke, Arizona, Michigan and Florida – and I get mad that I wasted my time reading it. But this would still be correct. Maybe you can make some small claims in the middle but if you believed those were the top 4 teams (as everyone did), and all 4 of them beat a 16 seed (as everyone did), what makes you believe they still aren’t the top 4 teams.

If you go the other way and get crazy, you then lose all credibility because your comments look ridiculously crazy. So, I got to the point that I don’t look at these. That is until Charlie showed me Avery Johnson’s reseeding the Sweet 16 for CBS. And so, let me go through Avery’s rankings and show exactly why I hate these.

• 16) Michigan State (8th if you just move folks up the S-curve after removing the favorites that lost) – this is what Charlie showed me that got me all riled up to begin with. Charlie said CBS ranked the Spartans as the worse team left and I said there was no way CBS would have said that, you must be looking at some random social media post. But nope Avery Johnson from CBS literally wrote on paper that a team that finished tied for 2nd in the conference with the most remaining teams left in the Sweet 16 was not only worse than all the teams from the other conferences, but it was also worse than Iowa, a team that it beat by 19 in the regular season and finished 5 games ahead of in the conference standings. Avery Johnson has already lost all credibility as someone writing about college basketball with this one statement. But we will continue.
• 15) Arkansas (12th on S-curve) – the SEC tournament champion is now worse than all of the remaining SEC schools, including Texas – a team the Razorbacks beat by 20 just three weeks ago.
• 14) Texas (16th on S-curve) – guess Avery thought so highly about Gonzaga that suddenly an unranked team that was 21-14 at the time was better than two ranked teams with significantly better records.
• 13) Nebraska (10th on S-curve) – If I was confused of how Michigan State could be behind Iowa, then I have to stay confused with the Cornhuskers – although they did split their games with the Hawkeyes. Still they finished the season with 5 more wins and 5 less losses. Then again, to give Avery some credibility back, Iowa did upset Nebraska to make the Elite 8, so I guess where credit is due.
• 12) Purdue (7th on S-curve) – they are still behind Iowa – a team they beat in the regular season by 21. Sure, Iowa is coming off an upset of #4 Florida. Lets totally forget about the fact that Purdue upset #3 Michigan a week ago. To be truthfully honest, I would be comfortable if Avery had ranked MSU, Illinois and Nebraska ahead of the Boilers and said I don’t like how an impressive upset of Michigan makes up for the other teams finishing 2 games ahead in the standings (and MSU and Illinois beating us at Mackey). I am fine making the argument that you think the seeding between the 2, 3 and 4 seeds might be wrong – but they still probably deserve to be seeded better than the 9 seed.
• 11) Iowa (15th on S-curve) – I can’t say anything bad about the Hawkeyes – they had an amazing March to beat Florida and Nebraska (so credit to Avery and the Hawkeyes on that win). I wouldn’t have ranked them here simply because they beat Florida but that is the kind of thing that happens in these articles.
• 10) Tennessee (14th on the S-curve) – I was super impressed with the Volunteers defense and their win over Virginia. Would I have ranked them ahead of the SEC Tournament champion that beat them by 11 in the regular season – No. Would I have ranked them ahead of 4 of the 6 Big 10 schools – No. But they also made it to the Elite 8 so what do I know.
• 9) Illinois (9th on the S-curve). This at least matches the S-curve. Of course, retrospect also lets us know that Illinois is now in the Final Four. But upsets later doesn’t necessarily mean seeding them higher is right.
• 8) UConn (5th on the S-curve) – I am not against making the argument that St John’s deserves to be higher due to the Big East results. Not sure that means that Alabama and Iowa State should have also passed the Huskies based on the first weekend of the tournament – and hindsight certainly says that the Final Four team should have been better.
• 7) St John’s (13th on the S-curve) – I think winning the Big East should have meant more. But the committee also remembered their losses to Alabama, Iowa State, Kentucky and Auburn. So I am not exactly sure where they should have fallen – having them jump UConn, Illinois, Purdue, Nebraska, Michigan State and Arkansas is probably too many teams.
• 6) Alabama (11th on the S-curve). Alabama’s win over Texas Tech was one of the most impressive of the first weekend – they definitely proved me wrong. I don’t know that I let them jump a Purdue team that beat them in November, but to be fair this is one of the teams that showed something in March that was different from how they played in the regular season.
• 5) Michigan (3rd on the S-curve) – ok, lets get back to ridiculousness. The Wolverines went 33-3 up to this point, only losing to Duke, Purdue and Wisconsin. They spent most of the year beating the Big 10 by double digits and 5 other Big 10 teams are still playing. I could see an argument that 6 Big 10 teams made the Sweet 16 so maybe they are better than we thought. I certainly can’t see the argument of the Big 10 has the most teams left so when I reseed them, I will have none of them make the Final Four.
• 4) Iowa State (6th on the S-curve) – so let me get this straight. The Cyclones beat Tennessee State and Kentucky, lose their leading scorer in the process, and suddenly they are a Final Four team above the Big 10 champion who has only lost 3 games all year. If Avery had knocked down the Cyclones because they are no longer at full strength, I could understand it. To move them ahead of Michigan and UConn makes absolutely no sense.
• 3) Arizona (2nd on the S-curve) – I can see a ranker leaving them behind Duke who was the consensus #1 team in the country (although if you were going to be contrarian and put someone other than Duke in the top sport, I could see taking the Wildcats or Wolverines based on Duke having some struggles due to their injuries). But the Wildcats won the Big 12 tournament against Houston, won the conference regular season championship and beat Houston on the road. So not sure how the Cougars jump the Wildcats.
• 2) Duke (1st on the S-curve) – as I mentioned, there were three teams that were on the top all season – Duke, Arizona and Michigan. With Duke being the most banged up, I could see moving one of the other conference champions up. Not sure that I would have kept them ahead of both Arizona and Michigan but then say that Houston was suddenly better.
• 1) Houston (4th on the S-curve) – I will be the first person to admit that after Florida got upset and knowing that the Cougars were playing the South Regional in Houston, I thought the home crowd and their amazing defense would be enough to get them to the Final Four. Hindsight obviously showed the Lunatic was wrong as well as Avery Johnson. But regardless of how I thought the South would end up, I certainly would not have moved up the 2nd best team from the South when the other 3 regional favorites were still alive.

So as I said, Avery Johnson lost all credibility with this article. He ranked Houston as the best team, and they immediately got beat by his 9th best team. To be fair, any reasonable ranking would have likely kept Houston over Illinois. But when you go out on a limb and say that the Cougars are now better than all 3 remaining #1 seeds, you are saying they are going to clearly win against a team that you don’t think is in the top half. He jumped Iowa State over Michigan despite Jefferson getting hurt and then that matchup never even happened since they lost to Tennessee.

If you left things as the seeding list, you would have the 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 9th best teams left. Instead, you have the 3rd, 5th, 8th and 9th best teams – where your re-seeding has taken 3 of the Final 4 teams and said they were worse than before. If you really predict all the upsets this way, you look like a genius. If you go from getting 2 of the Final Four teams from 1 of the Final Four teams while saying things like teams that lost by double digits to another one of the team are now better, you look like you are crazier than the Crazed Lunatic.

But since it seems like it is necessary to have some silly re-seeding, here is the only one that makes sense to me.

• 4) Illinois – the Fighting Illini have had an incredible March. They likely have the best offensive team left in the tournament, and their defense has been much improved in the tournament. But they also have the worst remaining record, losses to 2 of the 3 teams left (UConn and Michigan), and they are the only team that did not start as a 1 seed or beat a 1 seed to get to the Final Four. In fact after the 2 seed Houston, they had to beat a 9 seed, 11 seed and 14 seed. They are a fantastic team that can beat anyone left, but any pre-ranking has to leave them 4th.
• 3) Connecticut – the Huskies look like a team of destiny after Braylon Mullins hit that three-pointer to beat Duke. I would argue they had the toughest path to Indy and they are still here. Beating Duke is a claim that Michigan can not make – as the Wolverines lost to the Blue Devils in February (when Duke was more full strength). However, UConn did lose to Arizona. And Michigan has a conference championship and have won their 4 tournament games by a combined 82 points vs. 32 points for the Huskies. And the Huskies have the same amount of losses as Michigan and Arizona do combined. If the Huskies can beat the #1 team in the country, they can certainly also beat the #2 or #3 team in the country. But if we are seeding on resumes, they still fall behind the Big 12 and Big 10 champions.
• 2) Michigan – there is part of me that wants to make the Wolverines the top team. They are the regular season champions of the toughest conference in college basketball. They went 19-1 in that conference, normally winning by double digits. They won their 4 games by a combined 90 points. Four weeks ago I thought that the Wolverines would be the favorite to win it all. Then Duke beat them and Purdue upset them – they suddenly looked beatable if a team played the perfect game. So, since they were the 3rd seed going in, and the Blue Devils are now gone, they move up to 2nd.
• 1) Arizona – and of course that leaves us with the Wildcats. Their inside game might be matched by no one in college basketball, as my Boilers found out on Saturday. So, they beat UConn so they have that in their favor. When comparing to Michigan, they beat a Purdue team by 15 that Michigan just lost to in the Big 10 championship (although to be fair the Wolverines beat my Boilers by 11 at Mackey). The Wildcats won both their regular season and conference tournament while the Wolverines just won the regular season. And I would argue the Wildcats winning by 82 points in their four rounds is slightly more impressive than the Wolverines since I would argue beating a 2 and 4 seed was a slightly tougher path than a 4 and 6 seed. Basically, Arizona was ranked ahead to start the tournament and winning by 20 points a game doesn’t show they have done anything to change that ranking.

That’s right – if you paid attention to the entire first part of the rant, you should have known that the Lunatic does not believe in re-seeding the teams. The four teams that are left have proven that they can beat anyone.

Would it surprise me if Illinois pulls two upsets with their amazing offense? Absolutely not.

Would it surprise me if UConn keeps winning close games to win the championship? Absolutely not.

Would it surprise me if Michigan ends the Big 10’s drought of 26 years by continuing to blow out teams? Absolutely not.

Would it surprise me if Arizona’s ability to dominate the paint leads them to victory when playing in a football stadium sometimes leads to teams struggling to shoot from the outside? Absolutely not.

The Lunatic clearly has no clue which team will win their last two game to claim the National Championship. And I am not going to try to convince you that I know more by getting cute and changing the way that the NCAA Selection Committee, the AP Poll, or the Coaches Poll ranked the four teams.

As we saw from Duke, being the top seed doesn’t mean you are going to win the National Championship. As we saw from the CBS article, some sportswriter saying that Houston is now the top team doesn’t mean you are going to win the National Championship. And so I can “re-seed” the teams any way I want and it doesn’t matter.

The only truths are that National Championships are won on the court and not on paper through any sportswriter’s analysis or statistician’s models. And that Arizona, Michigan, UConn and Illinois have proven themselves over the last two weeks to demonstrate that they are the ones who deserve to get the chance to win on the court in Indianapolis.

Good luck to the Wildcats, Wolverines, Huskies and Fighting Illini!!!! The Lunatic will not insult or disrespect your teams by creating some new ranking – at this point, all four of you are equal seeds and equal competitors. It will take two perfect games to win a National Championship, and all four of these teams are capable of reaching that one shining moment.

As you probably know, there have been tons of stories about Braylon Mullin’s shot that sent the UConn Huskies to the Final Four. Social media was going crazy – and rightfully so. But because of it, I feel like I need to comment on a couple things that I have seen.

Lets start with the pathetic controversy and go to the most complicated (and also the one I care the most about).

First, as you can imagine, the emotions as the three-pointer went off were high for both teams. So, imagine being the announcers doing the Duke radio broadcast. When the basket went in and chaos ensued, the announcer screamed “Malachi Smith ran off the bench! That should be a technical!”

The Lunatic has mentioned this before and he is torn on the matter. On one side, the Lunatic believes you need to win with sportsmanship – it is an exciting moment but you need to let the game completely finish before you celebrate. On the other side, in almost all these buzzer-beaters, the final horn does go off – when the ball goes in with 0.4 seconds left, by the time it hits the ground and the scoring table can react, the 0.4 seconds go off the clock and the horn goes off. The bench might think the game really is over.

And after seeing this moment happen in real-time, this realization went into my head that has changed my original opinion. What happened in the UConn / Duke game was incredible and hitting a shot from the logo with your season on the line is a dream scenario – do we really want to see that result wiped out because your teammates celebrated the amazing shot.

I guess if you are Duke fan, maybe – but for the rest of the world, no one wants to see that historic shot taken away because the referee calls a technical foul on the bench.

But here is the part of this controversy that is ridiculously sad and does deserve to be commented on. Malachi Smith was running around the court, because he was actually in the game when the shot went in. I get that the announcer was heart-broken and wanted to see some chance of winning – but if you are announcing the game, you have to know who is on the court.

Now, to the next call for a technical foul. A video surfaced of Dan Hurley appearing to head-butt an official while celebrating the basket, and so many have complained that Hurley should have gotten a technical foul for hitting an official.

Now, we all know that I don’t like Dan Hurley, but even the Lunatic says anyone asking for this is ridiculous. First of all, as mentioned above, do we really want one of the most memorable moments of the tournament to get wiped out because the referee called a technical foul on the head coach.

But after the controversy, apparently the press went to the referee, and even he said that nothing happened. From what I have gathered, the referee went to Hurley to try to tell him that there would be 0.4 seconds on the clock and they leaned into each other so they could hear each other with the arena erupting into chaos. I don’t know if that story is true or not – obviously, the only people who know are the referee and Dan Hurley. But I have a hard time believing that if a referee got truly head-butted by a coach that the referee would hold his whistle and not call anything.

Since I also believe in Karma, I heard some of the praise that Dan Hurley had for the Duke coach and players, especially Cameron and Cayden Boozer. I might not like how demonstrative that Dan Hurley is on the court. But it is clear that his players love playing for him, and it is clear that he does have a lot of respect for the teams they play. He could have kept the press conference focused on his team, and he made sure to praise his opponents – especially knowing that some of the comments that will come towards them will be cruel and mean for losing a 19 point lead.

But here is the one that I need to say something about. Because it is the one that breaks the Lunatic’s heart. After the game, the press got some quotes from Cayden Boozer, who made the pass that got stolen. Apparently, he had tears in his eyes and blood on his jersey as he was asked to reflect on what happened.

“I could have been strong with the ball and not turned it over,” Cayden Boozer said. “I take full responsibility. I saw two guys open. I was just trying to get it there, but I could have taken my time. We just had a lot of time. I turned the ball over. I lost it. I ruined our team’s season.”

As is predictable with social media, while there have been both sides, many fans have been brutal about Boozer, saying that he cost Duke the game with his mistake. If he just hung onto the ball, Duke wins this game. And as you can expect, many fans have been brutal on the freshman point guard.

In the moment, I even thought the same thing that was a big mistake. Just take the foul. But there is a big thing between making a mistake and saying that this young man cost Duke their season. So, lets reflect.

First – on the moment. He made the pass with about 6 seconds left – and would have had a one-and-one if he held it and got fouled. There is no telling what happens in that six seconds. He could have just as easily missed the free-throw, the Huskies could have rushed the ball up the court, and hit a three-pointer to win the game. Time ran off the clock as UConn chased after the deflected pass and then brought the ball back up the court. If he had held onto the ball, he could have been fouled with all that time still left. UConn also could have trapped and forced a jump-ball, which would have given them the ball since they had the arrow.

Do I think that Duke had a better chance of winning the game if he had held onto the ball – in the moment, I did. But realizing some of the situations (such as a freshman would have been going to the line with 6 seconds left for a one-and-one to send his team to the Final Four – no pressure there), its certainly not a given that they would have won.

But here is the kicker – when I watched the replay over and over again (simply because I wanted to see the shot again and again and again), I noticed something. Not only did Cayden Boozer see two players open in the frontcourt. There was no Connecticut player on that side of the court – they were all trying to either trap or foul. If Silas Demary does not block Boozer’s pass, the game is over. One of the two Duke players would have gotten the pass, and ended the game by either dribbling out the clock or making it four point lead with a thunderous dunk.

Boozer saw a chance to win the game, and he went for it. Silas Demary made a great defensive play – and obviously, the rest is history. In these situations, it is so easy to blame the player for making a bad decision. But truthfully, in that split second, it is probably more fair to say that Demary made an outstanding play than Boozer made a horrifying blunder.

With 4 minutes to play, Isaiah Evans tried to drive past his defender and fell, losing the ball, and allowing Solo Ball to drive to the basket, get a layup, get fouled, and finish the three-point play from the line. And yet, I am not seeing any narratives that Isaiah Evans cost Duke their entire season.

With a little over a minute, Cameron Boozer was setting up to drive to the basket, and lost control of his dribble, where Tarris Reed Jr stole the ball. On the next possession, Connecticut would get the ball to Alex Karaban for a three-pointer that cut the lead to 1. And yet, I am not seeing any narratives that Cameron Boozer cost Duke their entire season.

Duke had a 19 point lead. There are so many places where you can point to a play that the Huskies made a great play and cut the lead. We need to have someone to blame, and we tend to focus on the last thing that happened. And yet, it is easy to miss the people who should truly be blamed. While it is nice that Cayden Boozer took responsibility for the mistake, the two people who should be blamed for Duke’s season being over are Silas Demary Jr for blocking the pass and Braylon Mullins for hitting the miracle shot, not Boozer for seeing open teammates and trying to get the ball to them to win the game.

Cayden Boozer shot 4-5 from the field, hit his only three-point shot, made all 6 of his free throws to score 15 points, and he added 6 assists, 5 rebounds and 2 steals. He only turned the ball over 3 times which is a pretty good assist to turnover ratio for a starting point guard. He was very efficient throughout the game. He saw an opportunity to win the game, and unfortunately, his defender made a better play.

People can say that Cayden Boozer cost the Blue Devils the game and their season. But the truth is that the Blue Devils are not leading by 2 points with 10 seconds to play if it wasn’t for the outstanding game that Cayden Boozer had played up to that point.

So – yes, in retrospect, maybe Boozer had better options. But it makes the Lunatic sad that a player who shot 80% from the field and scored double digits in points felt like they were the sole reason that his team is not going to the Final Four. And it makes the Lunatic even sadder when he knows some of the vitriol that he is having to endure this week from social media.

We get so caught up in saying that a player made a mistake, that sometimes we forget to think that maybe it was just the other player made a better play. For UConn, it is an amazing way to make it to the Final Four. For Duke, it was an excruciating way to have their season end. But college basketball is a team sport. The Blue Devils did not lose that game because of Cayden Boozer – they lost it because the Connecticut Huskies made an unbelievable comeback. Lets award credit rather than assign blame.

So, the Lunatic finally got his SQL codes fixed and has been able to create the always fun, scenarios page. If you click on the Scenarios link at the top, it will open up with the scenario if UConn beats Arizona – then if you click on the Green button that says Links to Other Scenarios, it will provide you links to all 8 of the potential games.

Very important disclaimer – the scenario pages are unofficial results. I do not do an audit to make sure all the scoring is correct on the scenarios pages (especially after this year when it took me so long to get them up in the first place). At the end of the day, the only standings that count are the official standings links – the Lunatic does do an extensive audit of those standings, including hand scoring the leaders to make sure all the results are correct.

However, if the unofficial scenarios are correct, here are the winners based on the 8 possible remaining events.

Good luck to all the leaders at the Final Four!!!!

I will have to send out emails on Monday – because I am exhausted. While I had a great day, it started super early so that I could golf and get back before the games today. And then of course, the UConn vs. Duke game was historically one of the best finishes I have seen in the tournament.

I started nodding off as I finished up my last blog piece, and so I will not risk sending a sleep-induced email tonight – it will give me an excuse to let everyone know that I have the scenarios up on the website (assuming I can get that done tomorrow night).

With UConn’s amazing comeback victory, we were left with 3 people who accomplished the amazing task of correctly predicting all 4 Final Four teams – congratulations to Bill Richter, Jim Carini and my son, Charlie Hodgson.

In a sad state of affairs, Duke’s loss will make it one of the worst stompings of the Lunatic in history, as he is currently sitting in a tie for 203rd place with no possible way to score any more points. But in an ironic twist of fate, that same loss and Arizona’s victory over the Lunatic’s Boilers has made it so that his son Charlie could be one of only 3 people to correctly pick all 4 Final Four teams. So, the Lunatic might not be able to pick teams well for himself, but he might have managed to teach his son so that Charlie could succeed where the Lunatic has failed.

At this very important time in the pool, here is how our leaderboard stands.

In the Standard Pool, congratulations go out to Bill Richter, who has taken the lead with 1030 points (and of course, all 4 correct Final Four teams). He is followed closely by Mark Walsh in 2nd place (1020 points), my son Charlie in 3rd place (1010 points), and Jim Carini in 4th place (960 points). Joe Chapman and Jimmy Lee are tied for 5th at 930 points, Ryan Zotti and Cinde Schumaker are tied for 7th with 920 points, and Marie Whittaker, Stacie Dooms and Debb Evans finish off the top 10 with a tie for 9th at 910 points.

In the Upset Pool, Mark Walsh leads with 267 points over Shirli Zelcer (262 pts for 2nd), Mat Reilly (260 points for 3rd), Mack Fournier (251 points for 4th) and Al Lester (245 points for 5th)

Finally, in our second chance pool, Sonny Mao has the lead at 600 points (as he got every game correctly except Texas over Purdue). Sonny is followed by a three-way tie between Drew Bradley, William E. Craft and Debbe Evans (all at 560 points).

I will try to get the scenarios pages out to everyone early this week (as well as send out some of the update emails). But for now, the Lunatic needs to fall asleep.

Congratulations to all our leaders in thoroughly Stomping the Lunatic!!!!

There are moments in March that you remember, that you likely see on replay over and over again. Each and every one of us can probably pick multiple moments that they remember. Almost every March creates a few of them. Sunday afternoon had that moment.

With 9 minutes left in the first half, Duke was ahead of UConn by 5 points, 26-21. Then, the Blue Devils went on a 14-0 run. After watching Michigan won by 32 points, the Lunatic figured this game was over. The #1 team in the country is up 19 points. We are simply waiting for the clock strike zero so we can appoint the Blue Devils the East Regional champion.

It was so bad that since it was around dinner time, I told Elizabeth and Katie they could watch Jumanji because it probably wouldn’t be that fun to watch Duke blow out the Huskies. I turned the game on my computer just so I could track it, but was only paying partial attention.

After all, the lead was still 14 points after the first TV time out. With 11 minutes left, Tarris Reed Jr made a dunk to cut the lead to 7. Suddenly, the Lunatic’s attention grew. Cameron Boozer would hit a few baskets to extend the lead to 11. Considering that UConn only made 1 of their first 18 three-pointers in the game, that felt like too big of a lead to comeback.

Then, Silas Demary Jr hit two three-pointers from the corner, and suddenly the lead was back down to 7. Isaiah Evans made two free throws with around 5 minutes to go to extend the Duke lead to 9 points.

The Huskies’ Solo Ball hit a layup to cut the lead to 7, and then Alex Karaban made a nice drive down the lane and a pretty pass to Tarris Reed Jr for a layup to cut the lead to 5. Then, Solo Ball steals a pass from Isaiah Evans, drives down the court, makes a pretty layup and gets fouled by Cameroon Boozer. After hitting the free-throw, the lead was now down to a nail-biting 2 points with just under 4 minutes to play.

I can’t remember when they announced this, but CBS might have given the announcers’ kiss of death. They flashed a statistic that #1 seeds that led by 15+ points at half-time were something like 146-0 in the tournament.

Cameron Boozer kept trying to hang onto the lead as he hit a jumper in the lane to extend the lead to 4. And after Nikolas Khamenia drove to the basket and missed, Patrick Ngongba hit a free throw to extend the lead to 5 minutes with less than 2 minutes to play. The Huskies looked like they were going to simply run out of time.

After Solo Ball hit a free throw to cut the lead to 4, Tarris Reed Jr steals the ball away from Cameron Boozer, and the Huskies find Alex Karaban on the wing for a three-pointer. The senior had missed all 5 of his attempts for the day, but with everything on the line, Karaban came off the screen and drilled the three-pointer. The Huskies have cut the lead to 1 with 50 seconds to play!!!

The Blue Devils started to run down the shot clock and they got the ball into their star, Cameron Boozer. And Boozer did what he had done for most of the night, and what you would expect from a star player when the game is on the line. Boozer got the ball at the top of the key, drove the side of the lane, made a pretty spin move to get free in the middle of the lane a couple of feet from the basket and hit the shot to give Duke a 3 point lead. UConn calls timeout to set up a play.

You would have figured that it would be a quick drive to the basket unless they get an open 3. As they take the ball up the court, the Duke defense stymies the Huskies, and the clock keeps running down. It looked like Silas Demary Jr was going to try to drive to the basket with about 10 seconds left. But Demary Jr got fouled, and then shockingly missed the first free-throw. He would regroup to hit the second free throw to cut the lead to 2. And so the stage was set for the Madness to begin.

Duke’s Dame Sarr gets the ball into Cameron Boozer and UConn immediately tries to trap him to force a turnover. Boozer breaks the trap and passes it back to Sarr under the basket, and I said, “They have to foul to stop the clock.” But the keep-away game had begun. Sarr passed the ball up to Cayden Boozer, who looks up court and tries to throw the pass deep to run the clock out.

But Silas Demary Jr blocks the pass up in the air and Braylon Mullins runs the ball down around mid-court. With time running out, he passes the ball up the court to Alex Karaban. But Cameron Boozer immediately got into Karaban’s face to stop his momentum, so with 3 seconds, Karaban passes it back to Mullins at the center court logo.

Mullins is a freshman from Greenville-Central High School, a city 20 miles west from Indianapolis. He was a Mr. Basketball in Indiana before coming to Connecticut. With the clock running out, Mullins launches the three-pointer from the logo and it hits nothing but net with 0.4 seconds left on the clock.

And Washington, D.C. goes crazy. Duke’s last gasp desperation pass gets knocked down by UConn, and Braylon Mullins hits a three-pointer from the March Madness logo to get the opportunity to go home to Indianapolis with his teammates from University of Connecticut to play in the Final Four.

It will be a play that we will see for years. A number one team loses a 15+ point lead for the first time in history when a freshman steals the ball as his team is trying to simply foul to stop the clock and hits a three-pointer from the logo to win the game for the Huskies.

You simply can not make this stuff up. Congratulations to the UConn Huskies for their historic 19 point comeback against the #1 team in the country. They will be heading to Indianapolis for the Final Four, where they will meet the Illinois Fighting Illini for a chance to play in the National Championship!!!!