Down To The Final Two

The Madness of March has come down to a sloppy assortment at the end, not a Final Four after all but a Terrific Two and a Curious Couple, the most curious being the outpost that calls itself “The ‘Cuse,” as if there were any other.

This would be Syracuse, and to all the literate enthusiasts of that fine academic wallow who have written and called to disagree with my assessment that putting Syracuse in the Final Four is like bringing road kill to the opera, to those who insist that Syracuse can win it all, my blanket response is two words: Fat Chance.

The happy reality is that college basketball’s national champion is not decided by opinion, and The ‘Cuse will have its chance to confound us experts as surely as it confounds punctuation.

Never mind that even the coach, the eternally dyspeptic Jim Boeheim, concedes that Syracuse’s inclusion in the final field is beyond fantasy.

“But coaches dream and fans dream,” Boeheim conceded.

As for Mississippi State, The ‘Cuse’s opposition, it has such an anemic basketball tradition that when it was given its regional souvenir caps to wear, only the word “Mississippi” appeared instead of the additional and clarifying “State,” even though State is how it prefers to be known, and Mississippi is the harder of the two words to spell.

Here is how I keep them separate. When you are counting seconds as One Mississippi, State would be Two Mississippi and Southern Miss is Three Mississippi. After that, it is a lane violation.

That is about all that is necessary to know about the teams in the game that doesn’t matter since one of the survivors will be subjected to even more abuse, not by columnists but by the winner of the real game, the premature championship game.

The glamor half of today belongs to Massachusetts and Kentucky, the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the nation, the game that should be Monday night’s primetime final. If this were football, by the way, it would be.

Yet, knowing ahead of time how this might work out, the seeding committee put the two on a semifinal course, which is like planning to announce the Oscar for best picture after the first commercial.

What should have been done is to re-seed the Final Four, even if doing so would further insult the already adequately scorned Syracuse and Mississippi State.

State’s coach, Richard Williams, is miffed that so little is known about his players and program, and Boeheim wears suspicion like a sweatshirt. If their teams had been ranked 1 or 2 all year, maybe they would not need inspection, though the only question of interest I can think of is do Mississippi State forward Dontae’ Jones and The ‘Cuse shop for their apostrophes in the same place?

It is at this time that the names North Carolina State and Villanova must make an obligatory appearance, and, I suppose, even Kansas, the Danny Manning team. All were low seeds who managed to win it all.

These are the examples most often used to prove that the NCAA tournament is the land of limitless opportunity, where on any given Monday night, the feeble may rise up and kick the snot out of the fierce.

Fancy must ignore fact or it is just dull statistics; nevertheless, the facts are that in the 17 years of seeds, a No. 1 or No. 2 seed has won 12 times, including the last six years, and in the 47 years of rankings, the No. 1 or No. 2 ranked team has won 29 times.

It is always easier to do the expected.

This year, the NCAA basketball disposal system has given us at the end, the chalk and the chaff.

I’ll take the chalk. Kentucky and Kentucky.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Bernie Lincicome Chicago Tribune