NCAA Tournament Final Four Preview
Welcome to a Final Four unlike any other. There aren’t any 1-seeds or 2-seeds left at the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Instead, we have the No. 11 Virginia Commonwealth Rams, who had to survive a play-in game in Dayton, Ohio just to make the Round of 64. The Rams aren’t your typical Cinderella story – they’re more like Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, blowing up four of their five Tournament foes by at least 10 points, including the No. 1 Kansas Jayhawks (–11) in the Elite Eight.
Impressive, but the Rams are still the underdogs this Saturday night at Reliant Stadium in Houston. Here’s a look at both Final Four matchups; CBS has the television coverage.
No. 11 Virginia Commonwealth vs. No. 8 Butler (6:09 p.m. ET)
Speaking of historic, the 1979-80 UCLA Bruins and the 1984-85 Villanova Wildcats were the only other 8-seeds (or lower) ever to reach the championship, and the Bruins did it when the Tournament was a 48-team affair. The Bulldogs (27-9 SU, 19-13-2 ATS) are 2.5-point favorites to join them, or –145 on the moneyline.
Butler wore the glass slipper at last year’s Big Dance, but it didn’t really fit – the Bulldogs were No. 5 seeds after going undefeated in the Horizon League, armed with one of the very best defenses in all of Division I. Seeing them make it all the way to the championship game and nearly beat the Duke Blue Devils was more of a pleasant surprise than a shock. This year, Butler has been the underdog in each of its four Tournament games, winning by a combined 13 points.
This year’s VCU Rams (28-11 SU, 18-20 ATS), however, are proving to be a little stronger on paper than the team that upset Duke (–6) in the opening round of the 2007 Tournament. The VCU defense has improved from substandard to average; opponents have a 49.4 percent effective field goal rate this year, down from 50.1 percent in 2006-07.
Even better, the Rams under coach Shaka Smart (hired in 2009) have adapted their game plan to take maximum advantage of their opponents’ weaknesses. Butler’s frontcourt defense could be exposed in this matchup, which would certainly benefit the OVER on the total of 133 points. The OVER is 10-6 for VCU in March the past two seasons.
No. 4 Kentucky vs. No. 3 Connecticut (8:49 p.m. ET)
And then we have the two wicked stepsisters. The Wildcats (29-8 SU, 16-15-1 ATS) have one of the top recruiters anywhere in coach John Calipari, who is making his third trip to the Final Four with his third different team, after the UMass Minutemen in 1996 and the Memphis Tigers in 2008. And Jim Calhoun is looking for his third national championship with the Huskies (30-9 SU, 21-12 ATS) after reaching the top of the mountain in 1999 and 2004.
Calipari’s aggressive recruiting of freshman players has gotten him into hot water – both his previous trips to the Final Four were wiped from the record books after Marcus Camby (UMass) and Derrick Rose (Memphis) were ruled ineligible by the NCAA. But Calipari continues to attract talented high-schoolers who want to showcase themselves for the NBA. This year’s one-and-done group includes Brandon Knight, Doron Lamb and Terrence Jones; Knight is Calipari’s latest point guard sensation with 17.3 points and 4.2 assists per game, hitting 38.2 percent of his 3-point attempts.
Calhoun, no stranger to controversy himself, has three freshman starters of his own in Jeremy Lamb, Niels Giffey and Roscoe Smith. But the main man is junior point guard Kemba Walker with 23.9 points and 4.5 assists per game. The Huskies are rather one-dimensional on offense with Walker running the show, yet they’ve covered eight of their nine postseason games this year, winning the Big East title in the process. UConn is a 2.5-point underdog to go all the way (+123 on the moneyline) with a total of 140 points.
