National Champions
As soon as I saw that Houston and Florida were going to be going up against each other for the national title, I knew it was probably going to be a grueling, hard fought game. Neither team blew any of their opponents out of the water except maybe the early rounds of the tournament. They didn't have any lopsided run away victories like Duke or Alabama did.
Both teams fought for every single inch of the bracket that they traversed in this tournament. I honestly should have given more credit to Houston, to be honest, it was a bit easy to overlook them. Sure, they have been consistently good over the past five years or so, but it seems like every time that big moment comes they tend to choke.
That's actually a good word to use today because that is what many people feel happened last night. Similar to how Duke fell apart late in their game against Houston, Houston in turn gave up a big lead against Florida and when the game was on the line they just stumbled.
So much so that many are wondering if the game was somehow fixed. In a world of sports that is now dominated by NIL deals, transfer portals, and gambling, it's not shocking to think it always comes back to money.
Personally, I don't think it was anything so nefarious or shady in this case, but it was a bit perplexing to see the Houston player just kind of give up after what appeared to be a travel. Was there a whistle that no one else heard? Was it just too late by that point? They were only down by two, but I didn't see where the clock was.
In fact, I didn't even see the game in real time. I was well asleep in my bed since it didn't start until almost 9 PM at night. Instead, I caught up via 30 key plays as I was walking on the treadmill this morning. It's pretty crazy to see how low the score was. 65 to 63. That's about ten point off the total score I had guessed on my bracket.
Speaking of my bracket....
I ended up coming in 17th place in the small pool of 96 players that I was in. My niece on the other hand took first place getting every single game right except a few of them. She was able to pick Florida and won the office pool that my brother in law started.
Meanwhile, on a national level I finished in 89,284th place out of 629,399 brackets submitted. I'm not sad about that at all. Sure, it would have been nice to win some money, but this just renews my hope that I am not totally worthless when it comes to fantasy sports.
With UConn taking the women's title and Florida snatching the men's, we now bid farewell to college basketball for another six months or so.
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