Jeff: March Madness: Where the Little Guys Rule

"...expect our two remaining Cinderellas, Mason and Bradley, to turn back into pumpkins and be out of the dance before Saturday."

Ok so I was a little off with the above comments last week about George Mason, but at least I wasn't the only one. To use the old cliche "if you watched the UConn/Mason game you couldn't tell who was the 1 and who was the 11 seed." Welcome to the New March Madness, where parity reigns. College ball has become more and more like an international tourney. For years in international ball, the USA dominated other nations because their athletes were just that much better. But since the late '90's when the US has been sending less and less of it's best athletes, the world has caught up to the point that although the USA still has the most talent, the chemistry and international experience of the other nations has not only leveled the playing field, it's almost tilted it away from the States.

This resembles the NCAA Tourney now too. The powers in college basketball, the Duke's, UConn's, Carolina's, Kansas etc are still getting the best players, but they're not sticking around long enough to develop much chemistry. THe freshman and sophomores that are playing most of the minutes for these schools are extremely talented, but are short on experience under pressure. And even when a school like Duke keeps some talented seniors like JJ Redick and Shelden Williams (both named 1st Team All Americans), it's more difficult to put talent around them because of the early defections. This opens the door for the mid-majors, schools that don't get the McDonald's All-Americans, but keep kids around for 3 or 4 years, and develop the chemistry and experience to be able to win in pressure situations. George Mason, Bradley, and Witchita State were not in last year's tourney, but all three were veteran teams. There were also 11 non-BCS conference schools (Nevada, Wisc-Milwaukee, Penn, UAB, Utah St, S Illinois, Montana, GW, Winthrop, N Iowa, & Bucknell)who WERE in the BIg Dance last year, and of those 11 four won at least one tourney game this year. Overall, 28 of the 32 first round games this year involved at least one non-BCS school (Not counting 1 seed Memphis or 3 seed Gonzaga) and the "little guys" won 7 of those games, and 6 more lost by 5 or less. So 13 of 28- ALMOST HALF- of the 1st round games involving at least one mid-major could have gone either way.

What does this mean? Well, for one, if you've enjoyed this tournament, and for me it's been one of the most fun that I can remember, you can expect more of these in the coming years. It also means when picking your bracket next year, you might want to consider the following options to pick games: blind folded, flip a coin, or have your grandmother fill it out (well except my grandmother, because she knows more about sports than most people I know!). ESPN.com had somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million entries in their bracket challenge. After the 1st round there wasn't ONE perfect bracket. And I'll guarantee you there's no one on earth who picked this Final 4. Not one! But hey it makes for a great tournament- unless you've got money riding on it. Vegas thanks you for the contribution.

Finally, I don't think George Mason's ride to the Sweet 16 even approaches the "Miracle On Ice" or Villanova's title in '85 beating Georgetown in terms of all-time great upsets. Hey it's a great story and they deserve all the credit for beating some good teams, but there's now way this counts as a monumental upset. In 1980 at Lake Placid, almost that entire Russian team was NHL quality, whereas the USA had what, one or two guys go pro? And the Georgetown team Nova knocked off in '85 was a goliath if I've ever seen one. The top teams in this year's tourney were good, but not great. Surf around the net and you'll find plenty of columns on all-time tourney teams, or SI.com has a really cool "What If?" tourney you can vote on, which gives the rosters of the top 16 schools if all these guys like Lebron, Melo and Amare had actually gone to school for four years. The lineups are incredible. If George Mason had made the Final 4 beating some of THOSE teams, now that would be an all-time Cinderella.