The March Mad: Wildest Final Fours of the 2000s
All eyes are on San Antonio this weekend, and not just for the vast amount of art exhibits in display across the city, per San Antonin's event calendar. No, art and basketball aficionados will both be flocking to Mission City as the Final Four gets underway in the historic Alamodome, for the first time 10 years.
It's a Final Four chock full of storylines, thanks in large part to how comically lopsided the bracket has progressed. On the left side, the Elite Eight saw a 3-seed, two 9-seeds, and an 11-seed. The highest and lowest of that bunch progressed to the Final Four. And on the right side, we saw a (1) v (3) and a (1) v (2) matchup, with the 1-seeds winning both.
We're left with a nice cut of four teams, with The Favorite (Villanova), The Blue-Blood (Kansas), The 'Red-Hot' Team (Michigan), and The Underdog (Loyola of Chicago).
It got me thinking, though, how the uneven Final Four is a microcosm of the last decade's Final Fours: the last 10-20 years have seen a wide disparity in the level of teams that reach the semifinals, some years being as highly-seeded as possible, others being representative of full pandemonium.
With that in mind, here's a partially objective, partially subjective look at some of the most predictable and some of the most unexpected Final Four weekends of the 2000s. (Why cut off at 2000? Because I'm lazy.)
Yesterday, I wrote about the most disappointingly predictable Final Four's. To finish on a good note, we present to you now the most fascinatingly crazy:
5. 2013
(1) Louisville*
(4) Syracuse
(4) Michigan*
(9) Wichita State
Average Seed: 4 / 5
Median Seed: 4
Result Unpredictability Rating (0 to 5): 1
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MARCH MADNESS SCORE: 9.5
It's hard to give an unpredictability rating above 0 when a 4 beats a 4, and the overall #1 team in the tournament takes the title. But technically, Michigan's win was an upset, as the odds favored Syracuse to face Louisville in a defense-galore Big East rematch (thank the Lord we avoided that). Plus, 9-seeded Wichita, who had rolled to the Final Four with shocking ease, spent about 35 minutes of their semifinal making Louisville look like their next victim, before the Cardinals' late rally. Throw in the fact that Spike Albrecht and Luke Hancock became the MVPs of a star-studded National Championship, and there were near-upsets all around!
4. 2006
(2) UCLA*
(3) Florida*
(4) LSU
(11) George Mason
Average Seed: 5
Median Seed: 3 / 4
Result Unpredictability Rating (0 to 5): 1
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MARCH MADNESS SCORE: 9.5
At the time, this was considered the most unexpected Final Four in history. After all, it was only the 2nd instance ever (and the first in 25 years) that a #1 seed hadn't qualified, and to compound that, George Mason was only the 2nd double-digit seed ever to make it to the final weekend. Alas, the proceedings themselves made such a wild potential end instead with a fizzle; though Florida did secure a mild upset over 2-seed UCLA in the Championship (capping off a roller-coaster of a season), none of the 3 games were competitive affairs in the least. Still, that didn't stop LSU from being one of the best feel-good stories of the tournament, and George Mason from being forever synonymous with "Cinderella."
3. 2000
(1) Michigan State*
(5) Florida*
(8) Wisconsin
(8) North Carolina
Average Seed: 4 / 5
Median Seed: 6 / 7
Result Unpredictability Rating (0 to 5): 0
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MARCH MADNESS SCORE: 11
It may surprise you, but there was a time, within the 2000s, that Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Florida making the Final Four was considered stunning. The year was 2000, and the Tar Heels had one of their weaker teams in recent memory, only an 8-seed. Florida was a plucky 5-seed, but not expected to make a serious run, certainly not being in big, bad Duke's bracket. And then there was 8-seeded Wisconsin, who had never reached a Final Four since World War II, grinding their way to the final weekend. It was an absolute hodgepodge of mediocre teams, and the biggest beneficiary? Overall #1 seed Michigan State, who strolled through the weak field to claim their first and only title under Tom Izzo.
2. 2011
(3) Connecticut*
(4) Kentucky
(8) Butler*
(11) Virginia Commonwealth
Mean Seed: 6 / 7
Median Seed: 6
Result Unpredictability Rating (0 to 5): 0
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MARCH MADNESS SCORE: 12.5
In terms of strictly the field, this was the wildest Final Four of all time, and it's not even close. 2011 remains the only Final Four without a single Top 2 seed. Connecticut, a 9-loss team that just two weeks prior had finished the season as the 9-seed in the Big East, became the de facto favorite. Butler made their second consecutive stunning tournament run, this time as an 8-seed. A good-not-great Kentucky team got to the promised land for the first time in the 2000s by beating the #1 overall team Ohio State and probably the best 2-seed, too, in North Carolina. And of course, a team named Virginia Commonwealth made the Final Four as an 11 seed-- and this wasn't a George Mason or Loyola-Chicago situation, wherein a sneaky good mid-major team that probably should have been a Top 8 seed at least makes a deep run. No, VCU wasn't even good. They finished 4th in the Atlantic 10, and incurred outrage at even being included as an at-large bid in the tournament. Yet, they caught fire at the right time.
What keeps this tale of unlikely contenders out of the top spot was the way the Final Four actually played out, which is to say, as predictably as possible. I'm not sure what anyone could have expected from a Final Four field such as this, but it reverted to the mean, whatever the mean was at that point. The 8-seed beat the 11-seed in a close game, the 3 beat the 4 in a close game, and then the 3-seed dominated the Championship over the 8-seed in a cruelly boring game. The 2nd best thing to come out of this year was Kemba Walker officially supplanting "Kobe!" as the name to call out while jacking up jumpshots.
1. 2014
(1) Florida
(2) Wisconsin
(7) Connecticut*
(8) Kentucky*
Mean Seed: 4 / 5
Median Seed: 4 / 5
Result Unpredictability Rating (0 to 5): 5
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MARCH MADNESS SCORE: 14
At first glance, a weekend featuring Florida, Kentucky, Connecticut and Wisconsin seems like a convention of blue-blood powerhouse programs. So how on Earth could this be the craziest Final Four ever? Take a closer look at Connecticut. Here was a 7-seed who, 2 weeks prior, had lost their last game of the season by 33 points, and had a young coach still evidently trying to figure things out in his maiden year. Take a closer look at Kentucky. Here was an 8-seed that was almost entirely run by Freshmen, and had played like that the whole year: talented, energetic, but erratic. It took a late uptick in quality down the stretch for Kentucky to avoid a 2nd-consecutive berth in the NIT.
Yet, here's the thing: Connecticut and Kentucky didn't just make the Final Four. Connecticut and Kentucky won.
That wasn't supposed to happen. As you've seen in previous entries, no matter how much madness occurs before the ultimate weekend, the Final Four is when things are supposed to normalize. The cream of the remaining 4 rises to the top. The stage was set for a Florida-Wisconsin championship, and the Gators, the #1 overall seed in the tournament, would surely fully redeem themselves for 3 straight years of faltering in the Elite 8 and reassert themselves atop the College Basketball world.
But the Huskies' and Wildcats' momentum just, inexplicably, kept going. Florida and Wisconsin seemed every bit as shellshocked as all the fans at home were. And then, the Championship somehow got even weirder! Because, despite being the lower seed, Kentucky was now the favorite!
And how could they not be? All that talent, FINALLY playing up to its potential, and with 4 consecutive games of Aaron Harrison's absurd game-sealing 3-pointers, there was an undeniable sense of "Team Of Destiny" about them. But in the Championship, that clutch moment never came, as Connecticut jumped all over Kentucky early on and never looked back, leading nearly the whole way in what was a surprisingly easy ride to the top of the podium.
2014 remains the benchmark for pure March Madness, and that Connecticut team remains the most delightfully inexplicable Champion in recent history.