What a weekend! It was as if the basketball gods were listening to your boy. After a lackluster opening weekend, March Madness delivered with one of the more exhilarating second weekends in years.
All season long it has felt like there have been about eight teams, who are capable of winning the National Championship. A lack of excitement upsets in the first two rounds, has the unintended result of all of the best teams still alive, going into the Sweet Sixteen. As a humongous fan of the game of basketball as a whole, it was extremely satisfying to watch the best teams in the country do battle.
Naturally, the leading story all week was the nineteen point comeback by the Uconn Huskies over the Duke Blue Devils. Duke now has devastating losses in back to back NCAA tournaments.
There have bew a few exceptions to the rule, but my theory that young teams will not succeed in March continues to hold true. Back to back years Duke has relied heavily on underclassmen, mostly freshmen. When the lights are brightest, the younger players falter, while the more experienced veteran teams thrive.
Uconn was the older more experienced team. And that proved to be the difference. Duke lost to a substantially less talented team. A loss that will haunt them forever.
The one team left in the tournament who relies heavily on freshmen is Arizona. They start three freshmen. By far the youngest team remaining in the field. However, the rest of the players in their rotation are juniors or seniors. This balance of young talented players, and savvy experienced players, makes me have less apprehension about their chances of winning.
This year’s Final Four feels so exciting in large part because all four teams feel like they have a legitimate chance of cutting down the nets and winning the title. That is almost never the case in years past.
According to the sports books, the overwhelming underdog is the Uconn Huskies. I would push back and say that the team I would be the most surprised to see winning the title would be the University of Illinois Fighting Illini.
I am picking the Huskies over the Illini because of Uconn’s reliance and experience. The Illini have been the most surprisingly impressive teams in the tournament so far. They have been physically dominant.
I have thoroughly enjoyed watching their strategy of recruiting a buttload of talented Eastern European players pay off. David Mirkovich in particular, has been the most impressive player in the tournament that I was not heavily aware of before the tournament tipped off. Hands up, your boy was not watching a lot of Illinois basketball games during the year.
Mirkovich might technically be a six foot nine, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound freshman. Coming from overseas, he is older than your typical freshman. He is yet more evidence to my theory that it is the older teams that have had the most success in March recently.
The team that is the shining example of my older teams theory is the Michigan Wolverines. They were my pick to win the whole thing before the tournament began. They are still my pick to win going into this weekend. Their best player, Yaxel Lendenborg, is almost twenty four years old. That makes him older than a good percentage of NBA players.
Every player in Michigan’s rotation has at least one year of experience under their belt. They rely on minutes from one sophomore and one freshmen, other than that, it is all juniors and seniors in the rotation for the Wolverines.
Personally, I have a little bit of an issue with how this team was assembled. Every player in their starting rotation began their career elswhere. It really does feel like Michigan bought their team rather than recruiting and developing their players themselves. My personal feelings aside, this is the most complete team in the field. Credit to them for buying players that have fit so well together.
The Michigan and Arizona game is the de-facto championship game. Whoever wins that game will win the next game on Monday night. Your boy is calling it here, that Michigan vs Arizona will be an instant classic that will be remembered for years to come.
A bientot!
Bennie's Blasts 
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