NCAA Hoops 2025-26 Season Thread: MARCH SADNESS FOR DUKE

A chance for a double UConn coach meltdown ... Geno and now Hurley. He's capable of most anything.

I'm gonna compare this to the LSU/Clemson national championship game in football, a few years back. An utterly dominant juggernaut new blood team versus a dynasty team that just keeps winning and keeps coming back to the championship rounds, but now is a bit reduced. Clemson just kept going to the playoff/final four/final game, and LSU was the GOAT. It feels a lot like that setup.

Clemson played a great first quarter + in that game, got up two scores and was shutting LSU down, then suddenly at halftime you looked up and LSU had 28 points and 300 yards. They were the all-time unstoppable force. Michigan fits right in that same slot.

It just feels a lot like that situation. Too bad the injury thing showed up. The Yax thing reminded me a lot of Mateen Cleaves winning a title with that injury, bad ankle roll, saying, "Nope, I'm playing and we're winning."

So the category is: "When the unstoppable juggernaut meets the dynasty for all the marbles." You gotta love it.

What do you make of Michigan's loss in the last game before the tournament? It is a classic bullshyt situation, and a classic non-peak intensity moment. Hard to say "overlook" when it is for a conference championship, but that is what it really is.

And there is a lot of history of national champions losing in their conference tournament. Pitino's mega monster team title at UK (rumored lost on purpose), Calipari's mega-mega monster title team at UK, if I remember right Georgetown never won a Big East Tournament while constantly going to the NCAA final game in the Ewing era, pretty sure Duke and UNC have done it recently, I'm sure others.

But I'm not just talking about losing in the conference tournament, I'm talking about monster teams taking a fall there. Back in the days when only one team went from a conference, it seemed the monster team ALWAYS won the tournament in conferences where there was one. No monster ever got left out of the field that I can remember. Anyway, it's an interesting spot. The juggernaut didn't jugger that day, Michigan that is, in fact their whole conference tournament was uninspired and didn't remotely resemble the NCAA team. Okay, they chilled for the conference tournament and super-peaked for the NCAA tournament. And I do love super-peak. Check.

losing can be a humbling dose of reality.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who wouldn't mind seeing a team whose 5 starters are transfers and who play in one of the two conferences actively trying to ruin college sports for their own benefit, lose.

Michigan will roll them. Yax is "fine".

One win to be the best team of all time. Really could be undefeated.

Michigan was pretty mid during the big ten tourney which had me a bit doubtful. Think the structure doesn't let May exploit his coaching advantage. Two days should be enough though obviously hurley is a great coach too.

I managed to snipe free tickets for last night and final four in stadiums suck. I would recommend no one to ever go. The only bright spot was so many people leave after game 1 you can take the "good" seats for free. But even they have a pretty terrible view because the grade of the stadium floor.

And the crowd was quite good leading up to the game but during the game it's a bit ****. Place way too big.

Interesting the result of the women's title game. A point I like about how a line, even in a championship final game of the season with all available data in, can be way way off. If they tipped that game up again tomorrow, the line would be UCLA 7-ish, instead of SCar - 2.5, 3.5, 4.5 and climbing. Instead of SCar nearly -200 on the money line, it would be UCLA over -200. It's an interesting phenomenon ... when there is an unanticipated mismatch with all the info in. It wasn't a fluky score; it was a mismatch. It's happened many times in men's championships -- wrong side big favorite -- and here it is again.

Pretty close, but up 30 in both the Elite 8 and national semi-final rounds? This seems an even greater level of dominance deep in the tournament.

I could see hurley having his players target someone actually. Be like "if you foul then like this you'll get away without a flagrant". Like the boozer eye injury.

lol cocks. Bummer drugs, thugz

Call it the "Saban Special." In particular with Deshaun, before title games he'd talk about "knocking them out when we get the chance." Then his troops were throwing club forearms at Deshaun's head under the pile. The literal knockout attempt from the dog whistle. Uncalled. Clemson won the particular game I am thinking of in the last second.

Great dominance both, UConn a couple years ago and Meechigan this year, but it seems Hurley is more like 3-D chess and Michigan is showtime NBA.

imagine if Cooper and Knueppel stayed at Duke for this season.

Didn’t know Nip was 16.5 months older than Flagg. They were babies when Noah went BTB, college is literally nothing anymore to these kids. If they ring, fine, if not, whatever. Bird once said he’d give up two NBA rings to have beaten Magic in college (which two is an interesting discussion).

It would be like staying an extra year in HS to them; how much of the campus do you think they ever saw? I doubt it ever crossed their minds.

The last guy who I thought might stay was Hayward, but he said if you’re a guaranteed lottery pick you have to go. I bet he’d like a mulligan now, though I’m sure he doesn’t lose any sleep over it. If I were one of the other Butler guys I would always bust his balls unmercifully about not being able to go to btb reunions though.

flagg reclassified to leave high school early. his "natural" freshman year would have been this one.

Also leads to a worse TV product as the camera angles are always goofy. Plus teams can't shoot as well.

And the cheapest tickets right now are $80, so it's kinda hard to argue even from a money standpoint as you could put it in a normal arena and tickets would probably be at least $250-$300. So are they really making much more money off of putting in these stadiums?

If UConn wins this thing tonight I think it probably surpasses the UCLA dynasty. Winning 7 in 28 years now > than winning 9-of-10/10-of-12 sixty years ago. Not to mention that would be 7-0 in finals, at least twice as big dogs. It's so way harder to make the F4 now over then, the 60's and 70's, especially on the west coast which UCLA had a pretty easy ride in those days. And no Alcindors or Waltons for UConn... the two GOAT college players by levels.

I'm tempted to take a bit of them on the money line just to honor them just in case it happens, and according to the "if they can keep it close they'll win" theory.

So many first half orgasms for Meechigan ... I think I'l take UConn 1st half too.

UConn +4 first half ... ride with me.

On the down side, UConn nearly pitched a perfect first half last time out, at least on turnovers they did. Don't look for that to happen again against the length and speed and uptempo of Meechigan.

I had a few tickets to cash so took them over, couldn't resist playing a little since it ends the season for me. Football thru NCAA Championship is my schedule, always was. When you're catching a bunch in yesteryear, you'd always lose the Super Bowl, always lose Jan 1 bowl day, and always win the NCAA Final. It was weird.

Hmm. This is the kind of situation where I would be prone to say, "If UConn can pull this off, I will pay it off" ... and take Michigan. But I didn't. Actually it is just the last 2 rounds in which Michigan had first half laughers. You don't get to laugh at Hurley very often.

Don't want to lay -300 and spoil a good tournament.

I wonder if Hurley thru the season and the tournament had an eye on dealing with a potential Michigan match up? Sometimes you peak at a monster team wondering how to prepare for them. Short of trading for Durant, Wemby, etc. ... it's a tough one.

Oh, shyt. A changing of the guard moment ... Big 10 finally gets there, and against the ruling dynasty. That's a good angle too.

There's been all kinds of mini mishandles by UConn ... the Michigan D bothering them big time. But hanging.

These refs keeping Michigan in this