Butler vs. Duke

David vs. Goliath. Butler vs. Duke.

What a match up tonight for the National Championship... Butler representing all the little schools out there, playing near home; and Duke the big powerhouse program.

It's going to take one heck of a performance by Butler, but man I would love to see them knock off the Dukies. If I was a betting man, I would say Duke by 9, but I would really like to be proven wrong.

Thoughts? Predictions?

GO BUTLER!

Well, if it is any surprise, Dicky V picked Duke.

I would also love to see Butler, but if I were a betting man, I would bet on Duke. The reason being, everytime I bet on something I lose. Therefore it would guarantee a Butler win. Unfortunately for the Bulldogs I am cheap and do not feel like buying them a W.

1 point lead for Duke at halftime. Other than the refs requiring Duke to use a fire axe before calling a foul on them, pretty good game.

Can we please get 3 rounds in the octagon for Zoubek and Howard after the game??

Total combined enrollment for these schools is under 17,500. I wonder if a final game ever had a smaller total. Maybe Loyola-Cincinnati in '63, or San Francisco-LaSalle in '55?

Apparently a fireaxe isn't enough

Darn.

Singler has to be the MVP! Some good players come from our state. I would love to see one of them come to UP some day.

Well one's thing for sure, Singler probably should have a Gillette sponsorship when he leaves college... That facial hair made me wish the TV was broadcasting in SD again... Just awful.

DaTruRochin wrote:Can we please get 3 rounds in the octagon for Zoubek and Howard after the game??

It's a championship, so 5 rounds.

I can only imagine Dicky V's head exploding after that game.

Singler was named the final 4 MVP.

Kinda cool.

One shining moment by LSUFreek of last night's game: LINK

so- is it just me, or is anybody else bothered by the fact that the three officials last night -Tom Eades, John Cahill, and Ted Valentine , were regularly all employed by the ACC to ref games this year, and none is listed as having refed a game involving the Horizon conference?

http://www.phillyref.com/basketball/ncaad1men/d1_men.html#c

I mean, with that information, it's no wonder the game was called as it was.

I'm not bothered at all. I think it's just a case of the better officials being able to take assignments from whatever assignor they want, so they end up deciding to work in the bigger conferences like the ACC. Officials are independent contractors who can work for whoever offers them games. And the NCAA does not have any say in who works where until the tournament comes around.

Huh?

The NCAA DID select the officials, and they selected them from the pool of officials that regularly is paid from the conference of just one of the finals participants. Their future employment could be seen to depend at least in part about how well they treated one of the conference members.

Hardly seems like they cared at all about neutrality. There are a lot of good officials out there that don't have this conflict of interest.

I think we all know there was only one man for the job...

The NCAA does not care about where the officials work during the season and I don't think they should. They only care about who graded out the best during the season and in the tournament games. Finding a crew of officials for the championship game who: (1) either worked both conferences or didn't work at all for both conferences involved and (2) are rated highly enough to work a national championship game? Pretty difficult. Picking the three who did the best during the tournament? Still hard, but this time it's because there is a good sized group of officials skilled enough to work the Final Four. I honestly don't know if there are guys good enough for the Final Four who worked in the Horizon. Maybe there are.

Besides, even if Duke didn't get any calls last night those guys would still get plenty of Duke and other ACC games. Coaches in the big conferences want to see the top level officials because these guys are known quantities. It's kind of a case of better the devil you know. And even if they didn't get any more ACC games there would be more than enough offers from the Big East, Big Ten, etc., to fill their officiating schedules.