NCAA Men's Basketball Re-Cap: The Big Dance has ended

---

It is hard to believe that it is all over. I feel like I have been basically living and breathing college basketball for the past three months and now here we are, all wrapped up with a pretty little Jayhawks ribbon.

There is definitely going to be a lot to talk about with this championship. Before we get to that though, let's talk about the Final Four games that took place over the past weekend.

I watched both of the games and I have to admit, I thought the Villanova/Kansas game was going to be closer to what we saw in the Duke/North Carolina game. Unfortuantely, that wasn't the case. The Big East just couldn't hang with the Big 12.

Being honest, I wasn't super sad given the fact that I had a bet placed on Kansas to win the whole thing back during the first round. With a +1100 I stood to win $12 on my $1 bet. That came to fruition last night. However, if you have been following me, you know how big of a Big East fan I have been all season, so it would have been cool to see them in the finals.

No, the Villanoa/Kansas game was all-together pretty forgetable. It was pretty much a one-sided afair. Nova just couldn't get anything to fall. It was horrible.

It did seem to be a pretty clean game. Either that or the officials just weren't calling anything. I was shocked to see that only four fouls were called in the first half. Then in the second half it was nearly halfway through the period before two fouls were on the board. Very intersting...

The NC/Duke game on the other hand was pretty fantastic. Talk about a barn burner. It went right down to the wire and I was beyond happy to see the Tarheals walk away with the victory. It's not secret I am not a Duke fan. Even with Coach K retiring, I still had zero love for Duke or their national title ambitions.

It was a great way to end the night given how uneventful the first game of the evening was.

---

All of that brought us to the title game last night. North Carolina versus Kansas for all of the marbles. Odds were favoring Kasas, but not by much honestly. I think it was -200 or something like that. I didn't place any bets beyond the one back at the beginning of the tournament.

I will be honest. I didn't stay up and watch the game. There was some controversy about the 9:30 PM start time for the game. Unfortunately, this is one of those occasions where us folks in the Eastern time zone get royally screwed.

Since the Pacific time zone is three hours behind us, if they start the game any earlier, they risk those crazy California people being stuck in traffic and not able to watch the game. Instead they push it back to 6:30 for the West Coast which means it is 9:30 on the East Coast and well past my bed time at that point. Especially on a school night!

Looking at the stats, it was a close game. Three points to be exact. Kansas came away with the victory 72 to 69. I can see right away that turnovers may have been the downfall for North Carolina. They had six balls stolen from them. In turn, they only stole two balls from Kansas. That can definitely hurt your chances.

It is interesting to note that NC out rebounded Kansas 55 to 35. Twenty rebounds is no small matter and if you convert on all 20 of those rebounds, that can easily be the difference between winning and losing a game.

It really seems as though these two teams were more evenly matched than I had previously anticipated. I honestly thought it was going to be a walkaway win for Kansas.

As I mentioned above, there has been a fair share of controversy around Kansas this year. Apparently there have been some allegations of recruiting violoations that the Kansas State coach has been very vocal about. Feel free to Google it if you want more information.

I have to say, I am a bit sad that we are finally at the finish line. Between college football and college basketball, this is one of my favorite times of year. I hope that came through in my writing and my coverage over the past six months.

I honestly don't know what I am going to do with myself now that we are at this point. I might have to start watching Baseball or Hockey again just to get me through!

Heck, I might even start watching soccer now that the world cup is right around the corner!

---

Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports

---

---

All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced