Just like that, the college basketball season has finally come to a close. It's been a wild ride and not the one that I was hoping for, but here we are. Michigan State fell well short of the preseason rankings they had earned just five to six short months ago.
Caitlin Clark did her fair share of breaking records this season, but it wasn't quite enough to push her team into the number 1 spot.
It's been a pretty wild ride to get to where we are, so let me give you a quick recap of the past several days.
Friday night the women's teams played in the final four to round out the championship teams. South Carolina had a pretty convincing victory over North Carolina State, and Iowa had a narrow victory over UConn.
There was some controversy at the end of the UConn game that people thing should have given them the win, but who knows how things might have went down had they be different. As much as I want to like Clark, she just doesn't play defense and she is reckless with the ball.
It reminds me of a batter who has the home run record, but they also have the strike out record as well.
Moving into the title game on Sunday, Iowa was completely out played. @mrsbozz and I were talking about it and part of the reason had to do with their bench. South Carolina had something like 37 points from the bench. I'm not sure Iowa played a single bench player.
I think Clark is quite skilled, but I am also not a fan of her attitude. I don't know if she thinks she deserves special treatment, but she sure did shove people around a lot and then act all confused when she would get called for a foul. At least take you lumps and move on.
South Carolina was definitely the better team and completing a perfect season is something to be quite proud of. With the talent on their team, I think Iowa could have made it a closer game. Maybe next year without Clark they will...
Meanwhile, on the men's side of things we had Purdue versus North Carolina State on Saturday. NC State just couldn't hang with the Boilermakers. They need to work on their conditioning. Edey is a big guy, but he put in the work to be able to play most the game without getting overly winded.
I'm not saying Edey is as great of a player as they make him out to be, but he definitely made the difference in this game.
Meanwhile, UConn had little issue taking down Alabama. It was close at first, but UConn eventually found their groove and pulled away from the Crimson Tide. I was very happy to see that!
That leaves us at Monday night. Nine freaking twenty at night, who thought that was a good idea? I will be the first to admit, I was sound asleep in my bed before the game even started. I woke up at around 12:30 the next morning and looked at the score just to see who had won.
I was quite happy to see that UConn beat Purdue by 15 points. I knew the matchup between the two bigs was going to be good and apparently I wasn't wrong. I'm not a fan of Purdue. I would have rather seen Illinois make it to this point. I'm also happy UConn won because that's who I had winning my bracket. It's just too bad the rest of it was so broken I don't think I will see any money this year.
I don't feel like I was too far off though...
Maybe next year!
Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports
