Pitchin' with Pritch: College football’s Final Four decided

An other busy week and weekend in the NCAA football playoff selections for this year’s National Championship competition. 

All of the major college football conference playoffs were completed on Saturday. Then, the selection committee, made up of athletic directors, former coaches, former players and reporters, began their ranking of the top 25 teams. 

In particular, they chose the top four teams that will play for the National Championship on Friday, Jan. 13 in New Orleans. 

In listening during the season and especially towards the end of the season, Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, LSU, and sometimes Notre Dame, and Wisconsin were mentioned as possible teams. 

By the end of the season, with the conference champion games played and in other cases, teams just not playing well and getting defeated, the field kind of eliminated some of the teams.

But where you have people on a committee making a decision, you just never know what might come out in the end when the votes are taken. 

There were a couple of things that happened that were first time situations. First of all, Alabama didn’t make the final four. That is the first time in the short time the playoffs have been part of the National Championship picture that has happened. 

Clemson was picked, but they were not in the top 2 selections. But in the end results, LSU was No. 1, Ohio State was No. 2, Clemson No.3 and the last spot that seemed to be somewhat questionable going into the last week of regular season went to Oklahoma.

Both semifinals are going to be played on Saturday, Dec. 28 and the top seed LSU will play the No. 4 seed Oklahoma. That game will be played in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta.

Second-seeded Ohio State will play the No. 3 seed Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona. Both of these games will be televised on ESPN. 

The winners of those two games then will play in the Jan. 13 championship game. 

A lot of the talking heads of the different TV networks made the statement that this might be the best National Championship group that has been selected since the Championship Series was started, even without the presence of Alabama and always loveable Nick Saban. 

Maybe his Aflac insurance will cover that and they could add a play-in game of some kind, but I don’t think that is covered.

Only Oklahoma has a loss going into the playoffs and that fourth place pick seemed to really be up in the air even as late as Saturday. OU has a lot of things going for it and if they did win it, a lot of people would not be all that surprised because the Sooners have an outstanding football program and they know how to win. 

That probably could be said about all the teams, but OU is the one that seems to be questioned the most whether they should be included. Time will tell.

Husker Volleyball
advances

The Husker volleyball team is still alive, even though at times in their match against Missouri you wondered, but they got it done. 

That third set was a first for me. I had never watched a volleyball set that went that long. The Huskers failed to finish, game point after game point, but they finally got it and then handled the fourth set pretty easily. 

Now they play Hawaii in the next round and that round is hosted by Big 10 foe Wisconsin. If Nebraska wins and Wisconsin wins, maybe the third time will be a charm for the Cornhuskers.

Nebraska Basketball

Whenever Nebraska plays Creighton, it is kind a difficult game for me to watch because I am friends with the Creighton coach. He helped me out a number of times when I was coaching and he was the coach at Wayne State.

Those times were when he came and talked at clinics I put on during the years, or he would send me books or films on different things I needed to improve in my coaching. As a result we became friends. 

I like for him to be successful and I like for Nebraska to be successful. Last Saturday Creighton was way more successful. They ran all over the Huskers right from the start. 

The Huskers are going to have to improve on every facet of the game if they are going to win any games in the Big 10. 

Creighton started well on offense and didn’t let up and the game wasn’t as close as the score indicated because Nebraska ran off the last 10 points of the game to make it less embarrassing. When you put a team together as fast as they had to with this group, it will take time. It will take time. It will take time.