March Madness holds true to its name

Every March, in the midst of the NCAA Tournament, it seems as though I am making the same proclamation.

“This has to be the most exciting tournament ever,” I say, to whoever will listen.

Underdog teams make the Big Dance what it is: the most entertaining event in sports.

Last year, it was West Virginia almost making it to the Final Four as an eight seed, playing fourth-seeded Louisville to the wire in a regional final, only to let a 22-point lead unfurl as a Cardinal 3-point assault ended the Mountaineers’ hopes.

Later that night, Illinois beat Arizona in what I consider the greatest NCAA Tournament game I’ve ever seen. Channing Frye was magnificent, scoring in a variety of nifty ways, finding a way to put the ball in the hoop all night long against Illinois’ renowned defense. He catapulted the Wildcats to a big lead, and Arizona, a three seed, led by 15 with four minutes to go. That’s when the Illini’s Deron Williams spearheaded a frantic comeback. Steal after steal, 3 after 3, improbable make after improbable make, Illinois somehow surmounted Arizona and made its way to the Final Four.

Those two games, of many, are still ingrained in my mind from the 2005 tournament.

This year, after watching the first two weekends of the tournament, I was ready to deem the 2006 tournament the best ever; I thought it had one-upped its predecessor.

But the NCAA Tournament abided by its March Madness moniker almost too faithfully, as the three games of the Final Four — all played in April — were some of the least exciting contests of the Big Dance.

On Monday night, Florida played UCLA in Indianapolis for the national championship. While the game should have been the culmination of the season, of the Dance, this year’s matchup lacked the usual buildup a title bout deserves. It didn’t have the star appeal of, say, the 2005 final, when heavyweights Illinois and North Carolina, the two top-ranked teams in the tournament, went to battle in St. Louis. That game was a classic, down-to-the-wire thriller, and the Tar Heels needed 26 points from behemoth Sean May to hold on, 75-70, for coach Roy Williams’ first national title.

This year, the Gators and the Bruins shared the floor for one of the most one-sided title games in the history of the tournament. Joakim Noah’s six blocks and a barrage of second-half dunks from the Gator big men were impressive, but the Gators dominated every facet of the game, and the final score, 73-57, was actually closer than the game seemed.

Which makes the Final Four a letdown. Don’t get me wrong; Florida deserves credit for its game plan, for its near perfect execution (the Gators scored 73 points on a Bruin defense that had not allowed more than 45 points in its two previous games). But considering the numerous barnburners of the first four rounds — the buzzer beaters, the excruciating finishes — the Final Four, the tournament’s Last Dance, was a ballet. The first four rounds were a passionate Rumba.

The star of the 2006 tournament was George Mason, from Fairfax, Va. Before the tourney, many people would have asked, “Oh, what team does he play for?” Now, it’s safe to say the nation knows that George Mason is, indeed, not a player, but a team full of talented ones.

On weekend one, the 11th-seeded Patriots upended two of last year’s Final Four teams (six seed Michigan State and three seed North Carolina). The next weekend, after easily handling Wichita State in the Washington, D.C. regional semifinals, George Mason, from the Colonial Athletic Association, a team that had never won a tournament game before its first round victory over the Spartans, took on the Dance’s top dogs: the Huskies of Connecticut.

In the Game of the Tournament, the Patriots rallied from nine points down at halftime to take the lead late in the second half, only to be caught by the Huskies as Denham Brown’s last-gasp lay-up attempt hung on the rim, tried its best to fall off, but trickled through the nylon to force overtime.

That’s when the Patriots showed their mettle. In the extra period, George Mason looked like the Big East squad, the team that had been in the national spotlight and ranked in the top five all season long. Connecticut looked like the mid-major that didn’t belong, Huskies with tails between their legs. Mason hung on to win, 86-84, and became the first 11 seed to make the Final Four since LSU in 1986.

The Patriots fell to Florida Saturday, but they had already made their presence felt as a legitimate national contender. Coach Jim Larranaga seemed to enjoy the ride more than anyone. Before the tournament began, he told his team to have more fun than any other team in the field of 64. There’s no question the Patriots did that.

Now, had George Mason beaten Florida and advanced to the title game, this tournament would stack up elsewhere in history. The same can be said of LSU. The Tigers had been impressive in coming out of the Atlanta regional, beating Duke and Texas, but in Indy, they failed to show up. If they had shown the Bruins their swagger, perhaps the Final Four would have been more indicative of the tourney’s March games

Alas, it was not. So many images — Tennessee’s Chris Lofton’s prayer from the corner being answered versus Winthrop on the tourney’s first day to prevent the two-seeded Volunteers from going down; 14 seed Northwestern State’s Jermaine Wallace hitting a step-back, fade away rainbow to secure the upset over three-seeded Iowa; Texas’ Kenton Paulino displaying the ice in his veins with a last-second 3 to lift his Longhorns over West Virginia after the Mountaineers’ Kevin Pittsnogle had just made a 3-bomb to tie it — made this March one of true madness.

If only the Final Four could have danced to a similar beat, the 2006 NCAA Tournament would have been the best ever — the maddest of the mad.