And then there were four

The smoke has settled just enough to see the four Division I schools that made it to the Final Four of the 2018 NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament. 

Four teams left standing. The names of those that made it through the brackets and have survived the madness of March until now are fairly familiar to basketball fans with the exception of one team. 

Villanova, Michigan and Kansas are names that have ended up in the Final Four a number of times. Loyola of Chicago, on the other hand, hasn’t been in this position for a while. 

Loyola was in the 1963 Final Four and defeated two-time defending NCAA Champion Cincinnati 63-58 in overtime.

This year they have put together a 32-5 record in qualifying for the Final Four. There is no doubt in my mind they will pick up a ton of fans for their opening game with Michigan. 

Loyola is a No. 11 seed in the tournament and will play the first game on Saturday against a No. 3 seed in Michigan. 

The Final Four games will be played in San Antonio, Texas at the Alamodome. 

Loyola is catching a team that is about as hot as they are in Michigan. In watching Michigan in the NCAA tournament, I find it hard to believe that is the same bunch Nebraska beat by 20 earlier in the season. 

But I also watch Kansas a lot and wonder why it took a last second shot to beat Nebraska and now they might be playing for a National Championship this next weekend. It is a funny game.

Kansas and Duke had a classic type basketball game on Sunday night. Both teams play pretty well and yet there were some things each team did that they don’t normally do and still stayed in the game. 

In visiting with my son Troy after the game, we agreed not very many times when Duke is playing do we get the feeling that Coach K gets out-coached. But in this game, KU and Coach Self seemed to have all their bases covered and countered whatever Duke did offensively or defensively. 

Duke has played a zone a lot this season and KU was ready for it. They got inside, got up 30 plus 3-pointers and hit enough to win the game. 

I don’t understand why Duke didn’t go to their big men almost every time down the court because they had the size on KU. I think Duke’s Bigs were better than KU Bigs. 

A couple other observations hard to understand is how KU could turn the ball over close to 20 times or more and still win. Also how KU could out-rebound Duke by a bunch.

 Maybe if you rebound enough you can overcome throwing the ball away, and apparently it does work some of the time. 

I also thought the Basketball Gods smiled on KU on Grayson Allen’s shot at the end of regulation. That ball defied gravity and spun out and continued the game. 

I did think that the game going to OT might favor Duke more than KU. In my opinion, Duke had more player depth but KU played pretty well in OT. 

KU did hit some 3-pointers that were huge because of where the game was time-wise. Svi Mykhailuk’s trey that tied the game late in regulation and then Malik Newman’s dagger in overtime showed what great passing does to get a player an open look at the basket. Those are two factors in the KU 85-81 OT win that will stand out forever.

Now the Final Four is set and a National Champion will be named next Monday night. All the games are on TBS. On Saturday Michigan plays Loyola-Chicago at 4:09 p.m. MT. Villanova plays Kansas at 6:49. The finals, also on TBS, will tip off at 7:20 p.m. MT on Monday.

Troy, save me a seat!