4/3/2023 basketball Edit

Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning presented by Will Garrett

Gabe DeArmond • PowerMizzou

Publisher

Gabe has covered the Tigers for PowerMizzou.com since August of 2003 and been the site's publisher since 2006.

1) One of the most unlikely national title games of my lifetime concludes the college basketball season tonight. My tournament memory starts in 1985 when Villanova beat Georgetown in what many consider to be the biggest upset in title game history. I wasn't really old enough to appreciate how surprising that Nova victory was. Tonight we get 4 seed (but not surprising that they're here) Connecticut vs 5 seed (and pretty shocking that they're here) San Diego State. The combined seeding is 9, which is tied for the second highest since they started seeding. It's also only the second title game without a top three seed. In 2014, 7 seeded Connecticut beat 8 seed Kentucky in the title game. By the numbers, that's the most surprising title game I've seen. But it was UCONN and Kentucky. There's nothing really surprising about it. The Huskies were led by Shabazz Napier on one of the all-time tournament heaters and Kentucky is Kentucky. They'd underachieved during the season more than they overachieved in the tournament. I'd say the only title game that rivals this one for me in terms of surprise is 2011 when it was UCONN against Butler. Connecticut being there with Kemba Walker wasn't really a shock necessarily. While Butler had been there the year before, they were a 5 seed with Gordon Hayward. The 2011 Butler team that made the final was an 8 seed whose best player was Shelvin Mack. Despite coming in with the target on its back from the year before, Butler made it back.

Tonight rivals that in that San Diego State is in the game. It's the type of title game that college basketball fans are going to watch because college basketball fans always watch the national title game. But it's not the kind of game that's going to make anybody who wasn't already planning to watch turn the TV on. I'm picking UCONN 69-57, but I hope it's a lot more competitive than that. I just want the title game to be worthy of this tournament, which has been one of the more entertaining tournaments I can remember.

2) If UCONN wins, it will be the Huskies 5th national championship in 24 tournaments. Only Duke and UCLA have ever done that over a 25-year span in college basketball history. The discussion of what constitutes a college basketball blueblood got me to thinking, what's the best college hoops program of my lifetime?

You can almost divide it into two halves. Pre-1998, it was Duke, UNLV, North Carolina, Syracuse, Indiana, Louisville and Arizona. There were others that were really good for some of that time, but I think those six programs stood out as consistently being good over a lot of the first 22 years I was alive. They all had multiple Final Fours and were in the discussion a lot more than they weren't. You could throw programs like Georgetown and Arkansas in there from time to time and Michigan was right on the edge of being in that conversation.

From 1998 (the year I graduated from college) it became Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, Villanova, North Carolina, Connecticut and Michigan State as the country's dominant programs in my opinion. Those six have combined to win 17 of the 24 national titles since 1998. It could be 18 of 25 after tonight.

Duke and North Carolina are the only schools that appear on both halves of my list and I don't think many would argue that those are the pre-eminent basketball programs of the last 46 years. From there, Kansas and Villanova each won titles in both halves of the time period we're talking about, but UCONN can become only the third school with five national titles in that time frame joining Duke and Carolina, so with a win tonight, I think it at least has to be in the conversation as the best college basketball program of my lifetime outside of those two.

3) This weekend was both one of the best and one of the worst weekends for women's college basketball. Let's talk about both of those things.

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