High tempo first half – what everyone would expect from UNC and Kentucky as the Tar Heels lead by 5.<\/p>\n
This game has had a different feel than the others because of the history – lets put that into perspective.<\/p>\n
This is Gonzaga’s and South Carolina’s first ever Final Four. And it is Oregon’s second – the last time they were there was 1939 – when the Ducks won the first ever NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
North Carolina has played in 19 Final Fours – winning 5. Kentucky has played in 17 Final Fours – and have won 8 (second only behind UCLA’s 11 – who ironically were also in the South Regional Sweet 16)<\/p>\n
North Carolina and Kentucky have played in the same Final Four 3 times assuming I counted right (1993, 1997 and 1998). Ironically they didn’t play each other in those years. But that still means there has only been 1 Final Four with any of the other three teams, and 3 where these two played at the same time.<\/p>\n
If North Carolina wins, they will be playing in back to back Final Fours – so everyone but their 4 freshmen will have made as many or more Final Fours than the other 3 schools have in their history<\/p>\n
But that is nothing. If Kentucky wins, it will be their third in four years – so seniors Derek Willis and Dominique Hawkins will have gone to 2 more Final Fours than South Carolina and Gonzaga and one more than Oregon.<\/p>\n
South Carolina is 8-9 in tournament history (with their 4 wins this year). So Kentucky has won as many National Championships as South Carolina has won tournament games<\/p>\n
Oregon is now 23-13 and Gonzaga is 28-19. UNC is 120-45 and Kentucky is 126-50. So either the Tar Heels or Wildcats will have won twice as many tournament games as the other three schools combined.<\/p>\n
So, in a year where teams are doing things that haven’t been done in history, the South Regional final will ensure that for any of these teams to cap their magical runs with a National Championship, they will have to beat one of the more storied programs in college basketball history.<\/p>\n
Enjoy the second half<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
High tempo first half – what everyone would expect from UNC and Kentucky as the Tar Heels lead by 5. This game has had a different feel than the others because of the history – lets put that into perspective. This is Gonzaga’s and South Carolina’s first ever Final Four. And it is Oregon’s second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1106"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1108,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions\/1108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}