There were numerous coaching blunders – In fact, there were so many that it is hard to go in depth. Florida St. not getting a shot at the end, Florida's botched attempts from deep against Butler, Bill Self not calling timeouts while getting blitzed in the first half against VCU, and BYU abandoning its offense for a three-point shootout in overtime against Florida. All of these were major coaching issues and it cost those teams, big-time.
Arizona's misses against UConn were perfectly fine – In the vein of what happened in all of those other situations, Arizona got the ball to its best player and gave him the opportunity to win it. He didn't but that happens to the best players. Credit Sean Miller for making sure his best player was the guy making the decisions at the end even though those decisions didn't work out.
The team that should be kicking itself most right now is Florida – The Gators had Butler seemingly beat a couple of times and it didn't matter because of some bad execution and the biggest defensive strength the team has suddenly becoming a weakness (that would be not fouling, Vernon Macklin's foul out was the first by any Gator all season). In addition to having Butler on the ropes, they had the biggest talent advantage of any of the Elite 8 losers. Even Kansas was closer to VCU that Florida to Butler.
VCU seriously underachieved during the season – If I were a major conference athletic director, I would have some serious hesitations about hiring Shaka Smart right now as my head coach. He has done an admirable and incredible job since the CAA Tournament began, but his team was up and down all season despite a very talented, veteran roster. In fact, his guards and wing players are as good or better talent wise that Kansas. This is a team that shouldn't have been on the bubble in the first place and certainly should have beaten out Hofstra for third in the CAA if not been a more serious challenger for the regular season league title. For Smart, a couple of more years to get more experience running a program would be beneficial as he is only 33.
Kansas really didn't have its normal talent level despite the top seed and all of the wins – Looking at that roster, only the Morris twins actually strike fear in anyone. Everybody else is either a nice college player or a youthful guys that didn't really blossom like many other top freshman for whatever reason. Especially at the guard spots, Kansas was vulnerable (they had shown this in the blowout loss to Kansas St.) and any team that could shut down the Morris twins inside would have a decent chance of beating this team (just as Texas did when they beat Kansas in Lawrence early on this season).
I wish BYU still had Brandon Davies – The Cougars would have beaten Florida and I think they also would have beaten Butler with him. The closest team in personnel to the Cougars with Davies is UConn and a potential Connecticut-BYU Kemba-Jimmer final would be absolutely amazing.
Wisconsin will never make another Final Four playing the way they play now – The tempo is just too slow and that makes playing well paramount to winning. Every team in the Final Four had a game where they weren't great or they were lucky to win, and Wisconsin's slow tempo means that if they fall behind, they won't be overcoming that deficit unless they are incredibly lucky.
San Diego St. essentially was Jimmered again, this time by Kemba – So the Aztecs did have Kryptonite this season. It was the team with the ability to defend the post and also have a huge perimeter scorer. BYU did them in twice in the regular season with this formula (there was no post defense without Davies in the 3rd game) and UConn used the same formula with Kemba Walker in the Jimmer role and bigs that rebounded against the Aztec front line.
Duke played to its capability, but they were overrated in the first place – Looking back on Duke's season, there were really no impressive wins other than the two over North Carolina (who at least had a win over Kentucky to fall back on). In fact, only the win over Kansas St. rates as anything decent done before the conference schedule as Butler was still scuffling and Michigan St. was just bad. In the game against Arizona, Duke played well in the first half and Arizona, other than Williams didn't. A normal top-seeded Duke team would have had the Wildcats so far down that the big 2nd half wouldn't have mattered. This wasn't a normal top-seed Duke team and the flaws will continue to show next season when Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler are gone and Kyrie Irving might be too.
Down below the NCAA's in the NIT – Colorado and Alabama have made the selection committee look even more foolish for putting UAB and USC in the field. Both the Buffaloes and Crimson Tide have steamrolled their way to the semifinals at Madison Square Garden where they will play each other. Good for them unlike annual Selection Sunday snub Virginia Tech who lost (as usual) in this field to validate the decision to leave them out.
Further down the spectrum in the CBI – Normally this wouldn't even merit a mention, but I like the CBI's best of three format for its championship series and getting Oregon with new coach Dana Altman against his former school Creighton at least adds some intrigue to the proceedings considering Creighton gets an unexpected home game against its former coach.
Back to to Final Four and the winner will be... - Kentucky will finally solve the Kemba question and advance to the championship game where they will be facing Butler. The Bulldogs will end the VCU run as much because of the dome as anything else. It is different shooting in each dome and Reliant Stadium is quite different from the smaller Alamodome where VCU played its regional. When it comes down to it, a cold shooting start from combined with Butler's experience will set up a Butler-Kentucky final. In that game, talent wins out and John Calipari finally gets the national title he has been chasing for so long in fairly easy fashion. I just think Butler will be out of gas after all the close games and playing a likely track meet against VCU before hand.
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