'It's Great For College Basketball' - Dan Hurley Kicked Alabama's Ass, Then Perfectly Sums Up How Fans Should Feel For The National Title Game
Obviously take away our teams. No shit the prefect the title game is your team playing in it and winning it. But if you just love college basketball, you love the Tournament, this is the ideal matchup when we got to the Final Four. The two teams who were consistently called the best in the country until everyone woke up to Houston. Rarely do we get a 1v2 or 1v3 matchup, however you want to rank those three teams before the Shead injury.
You have a goddamn machine in UConn. That might be underselling it. Alabama played basically as good as they could in the first half. They were shooting lights out, they hit a ton of threes, they looked the part. They were still down 4.
That might be all I need to say to sum up UConn being a machine.
The second half was just dominance. They slowed the game down, didn't care about timeouts and Hurley just kicked Oats' ass with his sets against whatever Alabama tried to do defensively.
But now we get what we want. Cinderella stories are great, we want the best teams playing for the title. The last time it happened in 2021 was a blowout. In fact I called it a wrap on the game at halftime and determined Baylor were champs already. We can't have that. We might since UConn just beats everyone by double digits in the NCAA Tournament. Think of the storyline outside of Clingan vs Edey.
We have UConn solidifying itself as one of the elite teams in the last 30 years with a win here. You need a title to be in that group otherwise you're 99 Duke, 15 Kentucky, etc. We have Purdue trying to win a title, Painter gets his first, Edey shuts up anyone who says he didn't win something with his NPOY's. Then inside of that you have UConn's guards vs Purdue's guards. That's the matchup. Smith was trash tonight (it didn't matter) but you can't have that against UConn. Lance Jones was huge tonight, is he going to do that against Castle? Hell you even have the Big 10 title drought storyline. You have the Big East trying for another title. It's perfect.
Back to tonight? Just what UConn does. It felt like they were just playing with their prey before devouring it.
That's basically the first half to the second half. I know Alabama had a run to tie it up in the second half, but it never felt sustainable. Not when UConn has two guys in Castle and Newton who can go get their own when they need it. Karaban can too in different ways, not in an ISO set but he has enough moves from the wing to create. Spencer seems to always hit a big shot and then Clingan/Johnson are just monsters.
Hurley is right. It's the game that's good for college basketball. Now get the refs out of the way and let us enjoy it.