Upon Further Review… Madness comes to an end
College basketball is over with March Madness behind us. Two teams were crowned as National Champions, Connecticut for the women and Maryland for the men.
Everybody had a pretty good idea Connecticut would win the women’s crown. An 82-70 win over Oklahoma Sunday gave the Huskies a perfect season of 39-0. Could Connecticut be the best women’s team ever? Not even the Huskies themselves were ready to go that far, even though their average margin of victory this season was 35.4 points, which was a NCAA record.
Connecticut committed 21 turnovers and was 0-for-9 from 3-point land. With all the turnovers and no 3-point shots the Lady Huskies still dominated the game over Oklahoma.
Connecticut is certainly one of the best teams I have ever seen. I think you would have to put them in the same class as the 1996-98 Lady Vols and the 1983-84 Southern California team.
Women’s basketball has come a long way over the past 20 years and has gotten the attention of more fans each year. The athletic ability of these players has gotten to the point you wonder just how much better can they get. They have become stronger, faster and certainly more fun to watch.
For four of Connecticut’s seniors the ride was remarkable. Bird, Cash, Jones and Williams were 136-9 in their careers, with three Final Four trips and two National Championships. The Huskies became the fourth team to go undefeated since women’s basketball came under the NCAA in 1981 and was the first team to do it twice. Tennessee also went 39-0 in 1998 when it won its sixth title. Hopefully Tennessee will be back in the title hunt next year with many young players getting experience in the NCAA tournament.
Back last fall, when Midnight Madness rolled around, did anybody pick Maryland to win the national championship? Duke was perched on top of the polls and according to all the experts, nobody was going to get in the Blue Devils’ way.
Maybe somebody should have told Maryland they didn’t have a chance. Maryland was never ranked at No. 1 and Duke held the top position all but four weeks. Kansas was No. 1 when Duke fell to the No. 2 spot.
All Maryland did was dominate those same Blue Devils in their second meeting of the season and finish two games ahead of them in the ACC standings.
In the NCAA tournament, they dismantled Kentucky, Connecticut, had little trouble with Kansas and finally put away those pesky Hoosiers.
Let’s give Indiana some credit — they were the underdog in every game they played in the NCAA tournament but held their ground and earned the right to be in the championship game.
Maryland finished 32-4, 15-0 in their final season at Cole Field House. After their loss at Oklahoma on Dec. 21, they proceeded to win 18 of their next 19 games.
Nobody gave Maryland a chance to make it to the finals and I’m not sure why. They did make it to the Final Four last year before blowing a 22-point lead. Maybe it was their previous two seasons of choking under pressure, which led to nobody giving them a chance.
Whatever the reason, Maryland proved a whole lot of people wrong and spoiled many office pool dreams of big money. I know of a few people around here that are canceling that big vacation to Hawaii.