Championship Review

Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. What a game.

That could be a sufficient review but I'll give you a little more. We were from roughly two inches away from witnessing the greatest sports moment of our lives. After Butler continued to fight back and not let the game get away from them they found themselves down two with the ball off a rebound with 3.6 seconds left. Gordon Heyward grabbed the board, shot down the right sideline (and received a sick pick along the way, leveling Kyle Singler), and a millisecond before the clock expired launched a shot from a little over half-court. The ball ricocheted off the backboard, off the front rim, and then it hit the floor. That was the most exciting few seconds I can remember, and if it went through it would have been the most memorable sports moment I have ever seen.

Let's back up though for a second. How did Butler find themselves with the ball down only two points? Controversy, that's how. Butler was down five with two minutes left. They had not hit a field goal in seven minutes. Duke had the ball. It appeared all but over. But once again we underestimated the Bulldogs. They got a stop and managed to cut the lead to one. Now they have the ball with ten seconds left. Coach Stevens calls a timeout and they run an isolation play for Heyward. It looked like he was trying to draw and dish but he could not find an open man so he did a little step back J over Duke's seven footer Zoubek. In and out. Zoubek recovers and grabs the board and Butler smartly immediately fouls. Zoubek steps to the line and nails the first. Duke up two. Then, in a moment I still cannot get over, Zoubek intentionally misses the second free throw. He was hoping the ball would bounce around a little, a skirmish would ensue and the time would expire off the clock. But lets think about this. There was almost four seconds left on the clock - that is a ton of time in this situation. Second, and most important, Duke was ONLY UP TWO POINTS. If they were up three and said "lets gamble with the intentional miss and worst case is they tie it up and we go to overtime". If Butler hits that shot, if it's two more inches to the left, Duke LOSES THE GAME. I still cannot get over this decision by Coach K who is going to go down as one of the top two or three coaches of all time. This decision alone should bump him down the list a few spots. The move there is to hit the shot, take the point, enjoy your three point lead, put a defender on the inbound pass and make them pull a Christian Laettner on you (think that played in at all?).

Anyway, I really wish that came back to bite Duke, it would have been great. But as we have it Duke is our national champ so congrats to them. Huge shout out to Butler too, that was the most impressive tournament performance I have ever seen. They never got scared. They never backed down. Against teams like Syracuse and Kansas State they were the aggressor and dictated tempo and forced the big dogs to play their style of basketball.

Another shout out to Coach K - hate to do it but think about it. Thirty years coaching, eleven final fours, four championships. He is 11-1 in Elite 8 games. Nice work, Coach.

That wraps up the 2010 March Madness blog. I am glad I was able to document the greatest tournament I can ever remember. See you next year.


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