In the Main Pool, either Boogie Schefter or Pat O'Brien will take down top honors as Aiden holds a slim lead over Nate S, with everyone else mathematically eliminated at this stage. In the Gamblers Pool, it has been Scott B from the start, but like a 20-1 shot that I've bet to go gate-to-wire, he is getting extremely leg weary in the final furlong. Tiny may even be a slight favorite to catch him at this point. But gobbling up all of the ground in the late stages is Chubbs. If he finds a way to pull off the upset, he will be worth every penny of the $385M over 12 years that the Mets are paying him.
The first spot in the Final Four would come out of the Midwest Region as the Houston Cougars took on the Oregon St. Beavers. The Beavers have seemed like this year's team of destiny. They had overachieved just to finish midpack in the PAC-12, but to make a run to the conference tourney title was more than anyone could have imagined. To continue that run by taking out three teams who had been ranked in the Top 25 this season was some movie magic type sh-tuff. (Hey, this year's tournament is taking place exclusively in Indiana, so it makes sense.). But they would need to find yet another gear to beat the Cougars, a Top 10 team for most of the season. It didn't seem like the Beavers had it in them early on, as Houston clamped down on them defensively. Oregon St. was stuck at 4 points nearly 9 minutes into the game. Yes, that was similar to how the Sweet 16 played out when they faced another extremely good defensive team in Loyola-Chicago, but in that game, they pulled it together and led by 8 at halftime. Here, they faced what seemed to be an insurmountable 17 point deficit as they went to intermission. Oregon St. would need to take a page out of Houston's playbook if they wanted to get back into this game because there weren't going to be many easy shots on the offensive end. They needed to shut down the Cougar offense to close the gap. The Beavers began slowly erasing the huge Houston lead, but a random accident midway through the second half would really help their cause. Houston's leading scorer, Marcus Sasser, bumped heads with an Oregon St. player as he tried to fight through a screen. If they had a blue tent in basketball, they would have brought him into it to check for a concussion. While Sasser tried to remember what planet he was on, the Cougar offense stalled. The lead continued to shrink until an Oregon St. three with less than 4 minutes to go tied the game at 55. Team of destiny! But right when Houston looked like they were on the ropes, they showed that they are a championship caliber ballclub. They scored 9 of the next 10 points to put the game away. Oral Roberts had come oh so close to being the first 15 seed in the Elite Eight and Oregon St. had looked like they might become the first 12 seed to crash the Final Four. Sadly, the two best Cinderella stories of this year's tournament have reached their final chapter. Houston is the first team in the 2021 Final Four, advancing after a 67-61 victory.
One of the great March Madness bets in Vegas is the "First to 15" bet. It doesn't matter how lopsided a matchup might be, either team has a legitimate shot to get to 15 points in a game. Well, almost any team has a legitimate shot. In this year's tournament, there is one team that was a surefire loser when it came to that bet: Arkansas. Colgate, Texas Tech, Oral Roberts...all got to 15 before Arkansas. In fact, all 3 of those teams held double-digit leads on the Razorbacks before Arkansas came back to win. It's like they had to give all of their opponents a head start before proving that they were clearly the superior team. They likely wouldn't have that luxury against Baylor, since the Bears were ranked higher than the Razorbacks all year long. I told my cousin Dave that I could see this game going a couple of different ways: either the Razorbacks would finally take an opponent seriously early on, play a disciplined game from start to finish and upset the #1 seed...or Baylor might win by 39. If you chose door #2, you probably felt pretty good at the beginning of this game. Once again, Arkansas was tremendously sloppy with the ball, turning the ball over repeatedly and allowing Baylor to jump out to a 29-11 lead. Surely the double-digit deficit was something the Razorbacks were used to, but making up that type of ground on one of he best teams was a recipe for disaster. Or was it? When Arkansas stopped turning the ball over, they scored at will on the Bears. At halftime, Baylor's lead was down to 8. It was down to 4 midway through the second half. But as we saw in the first game of the night, overcoming a huge deficit takes so much out of a team. If they're not able to poke their nose out in front at some point (I know, so many horse racing analogies!), the task becomes too overwhelming. Oregon St. drew even, but could never get ahead to really terrify Houston. And even though Arkansas showed explosive stretches where you thought they might just find one more 8-0 run to grab the lead on Baylor, it never materialized late. They missed 11 shots in a row after drawing to within 4 points and this one was over. Baylor will take on Houston in one national semifinal after defeating Arkansas 81-72 to win the South Region.
When there's just two games in a given night, the recaps get shorter. So we're done. Who will join Houston and Baylor in the Final Four? Tune in for the West and East Regional finals on Tuesday night (still feels weird saying that) to find out!
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