At least a basketball school won the Final Four!
There were so many upsets and one-point games in the NCAA basketball tournament this year it was unreal.
It made for what may be the most exciting NCAA basketball tournament in history.
And the final game went all the way to overtime before Virginia managed an eight-point, 85-77 victory over Texas Tech, a school best known for its football team rather than being a pure basketball program.
Yet, although a perennial basketball powerhouse in the ACC, Virginia has only three Final Four appearances in its history while annually battling Duke and North Carolina for ACC supremacy at different times across the decades of the league’s history.
A year ago, Virginia was the first No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16 seed in the tourney’s first game.
This year, the Cavaliers win their first-ever national championship.
What a difference a year makes!
I’d like to know if anyone got the brackets perfect this year! I doubt it, although of course it was possible. If you hear of anyone having a perfect bracket, please let me know.
Another difference between this tournament and those in the past is there was no star with national credentials. No Michael Jordan, no Pete Maravich, no Kareem Abdul Jabbar. No Larry Bird.
All we had were Virginia’s Ty Jerome, Kyle Guy and DeAndre Hunter and Texas Tech’s Matt Mooney and Jarrett Culver.
And Hunter was magnificent in the final game, putting up a career-high 27 points, shooting 8-of-16 from the field and grabbing nine rebounds. He only had five points in the first half against the Red Raiders but flipped a switch at halftime stood out as the most impressive player on the court in the second half and perhaps the game.
And how about Virginia head coach Tony Bennett? He has not gone from relative obscurity to the Coaches’ Hall of Fame! His Cavaliers have now won four ACC regular season titles and a national championship! Quite a resume!
Suddenly, Bennett won’t have a problem recruiting highly qualified players to his program. Winning begets winning and players want to play for a winner.
Winning a national championship changes programs and coaches because can now get the best players without having to prove anything!
I’m happy for Tony Bennett and the Virginia Cavaliers and I am also happy for Kim Mulkey and the Baylor women’s basketball team who won the NCAA women’s basketball tournament on Sunday. I’ve known Kim since I took her and her team on a tour of Children’s Hospital in New Orleans. She is so gracious and unassuming (and pretty, too) that is hard not to like her.
She was the head coach at Louisiana Tech when I met her and began to follow her. She won at Ruston and then moved to Baylor and began winning there. She is a winner and will continue to be because she works at it.
Another coaching winner was Gene Barbour, who coached at Sunflower School in Coahoma County, Clarksdale High School, Clarksdale-Coahoma High School and Lee Academy during his successful coaching career.
But that’s another column and I’ll share that with you next week in this space.
For now, let’s celebrate with the Virginia Cavaliers and the Baylor Lady Bears, both NCAA basketball champions for 2019!
As they should be!
