By Woodrow Carroll
Both the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournament championship games played out last weekend and last Monday, April 3. Each offered plenty of excitement, and, with a plethora of story lines.
South Carolina captured the women’s national championship last season with a 64-49 victory over Connecticut in the championship game. The Gamecocks were not undefeated last season, however. South Carolina did lose two games en route to a 35-2 final record last season.
This year, South Carolina was dethroned by Iowa, 77-73, in one semifinal game.
Talent such as Clark makes the opposition ready.
Second best is best! Three of the Final Four teams in the women’s final, LSU, Iowa, and Virginia Tech, finished in second place in the their respective conference races.
LSU was one game in back of South Carolina in the Southeastern Conference. The Conference battle between LSU and South Carolina was not close with the South Carolina winning, 88-64. The Iowa women (15-3 in the Big Ten Conference) were in second place, one game in back of Indiana. and Virginia Tech ended up in second place in the Atlantic Coast Conference behind champion Notre Dame.
Despite the upsets and low-seeding for the four teams that made it to Men’s Final Four, three of those teams were conference champions or co-champion.
Both San Diego State and Florida Atlantic University (FAU), two of the men’s Final Four, captured their conference championships outright. The Aztecs of San Diego State captured the Mountain West Conference with a 15-3 record. In Conference USA, the Owls of Florida Atlantic were 18-2 to lead the pack. Almost as good were the Miami (Fla.) women who shared Atlantic Coast Conference honors with Virginia, each with a final conference record of 15-5.
The outlier were the UConn men who finished tied for fourth place in the Big East Conference with a 13-7 record.
Some final notes: Among the Div-I men’s basketball conferences only Oral Roberts was undefeated in conference games. The Golden Eagles were 18-0 in the Summit League. In the bottom of the conference, no team finished without recording at least one conference victory.
The in women’s championship game between LSU and Iowa was not close and LSU’s 102-85 victory read as though it was an NBA game.
The men’s NCAA championship game was not close, either. UConn beat San Diego State, 76-59, to give the school its fifth men’s national championship.
San Diego State men, who beat Florida Atlantic, 72-71, on a buzzer- beater by Lamont Butler in a semifinal games, was defeated by a superior UConn side in the final game.
For a team that was less than spectacular during the regular season, the postseason was another story for the UConn men.
Over the course of six games in the NCAA Tournament, UConn’s closest margin was a 72-59 victory over Miami (Fla.) in a semifinal game.
•Which Hurley do you want? Take them both. Coaching the victorious UConn Huskies, was Dan Hurley and his big brother is Bobby Hurley who is coaching Arizona State. A trip to the Final Four has eluded Bobby Hurley. However, as the starting point guard at Duke, Bobby Hurley helped the Blue Devils win NCAA national championships in both 1991 and 1992. Bob Hurley Sr., a high school coaching legend at St. Anthony’s in Jersey City, N.J., has to feel good about both sons.