Villanova Wildcats win NCAA Basketball National Championship in Epic Game 77-74

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Villanova, the small Catholic college with about 10,000 students from Philadelphia took on the mighty North Carolina Tar Heels with about 30,000 and gave us one of the greatest national championship games in history.

Playing before 70,000 fans in Houston with millions watching on television, both teams put on an exceptional display of why college sports are so popular.  March Madness is the NCAA national championship tourney with 68 teams battling it out to see who is number one.

This season was full of upsets with numerous teams reaching number one during the season only to be beaten and it was one of few college seasons where none of the top teams finished the season unbeaten.

North Carolina is one of the legendary basketball programs in America with five national titles while Villanova has just one national title, 31 years ago, to its credit.  Of course the Tar Heels are also home to Michael Jordan whose last second shot brought them a national title.

There were no Michael Jordans in this game.  The star for the Tar Heels was a guard from Iowa but even with no marquee players, heroes were plentiful.  The Iowa guard sank a three point shot with just 4.7 seconds left in the game to tie it after Villanova had surge to a ten point led with about seven minutes to play.

In the first half North Carolina pulled ahead by seven point, but by the middle of the second half Villanova had reversed the game and were ten points ahead.  A furious run by Carolina the last five minutes resulted in the three point shot with 4.7 left to tie the game.

The Wildcats threw the ball in, their star dribbled across the half court line, then handed it back to a teammate who let fly a long three point bomb just as time ran out and the buzzer rang ending the game.  What seemed like an eternity but in fact was just fractions of a minute went by before the ball swooshed through the hoop.

As the 70,000 exploded when they realized the shot was good and the players and coaches stood momentarily in shock, confetti rained from the ceiling and the Wildcats realized they had pulled off one of the great upsets in an amazing game.

The top scorer for Villanova came off the bench to score 20 points, he only scored 25 total in the previous four games.  The hero scoring the winning bucket had a brother playing for North Carolina.  Another Villanova star was home schooled in high school by his Christian family and taught basketball by his mother.

I mention no names because this game had so many of the most unlikely heroes they all deserve credit.

Both teams should be proud and thanks Villanova for showing us giant killers still have a chance in America.

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March Madness - Badgers Devour Wildcats in Epic Rematch - Wisconsin Moves to Final

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After a season of hype, consistent winning form, and a whole lot of basketball tradition, the epic semi-final rematch between the Kentucky Wildcats and Wisconsin Badgers lived up to the drama.

Just last year in the same match up in the national semi-finals, Kentucky edged Wisconsin by one point on a buzzer beater,  This year Wisconsin turned the tables and shocked the basketball world by ending Kentucky's historic 38 game winning streak two victories shy of perfection.

The final scoreboard read Wisconsin 71-64 but the grit and determination of the Badger squad in battling back from deficits was the determining factor.  Kentucky, as usual, fought back from deficits of nine-points in the first-half and 8 points in the second-half and with six minutes left in the game held a four point lead after outscoring Wisconsin 16-4.

Suddenly the Kentucky magic that saved their unbeaten season time-and-again went cold.  The team of destiny fell flat and only scored four points the rest of the game.  Wisconsin stars Frank Kaminsky, the MVP of the game, and Sam Dekker rallied the Badgers to a seven-point victory.

Shock waves swept through the Kentucky Blue nation as tears of sadness rather than joy were shed at the end of the game.  Twice in the closing minutes, bad calls by the refs went against UK, but they had plenty of opportunities to save the victory and did not.

For Wisconsin, the blue-collar team of basketball again rallied behind the most valuable player of the year in college basketball, Kaminsky, and the team never lost sight of their goal.  You see, it was never their intent to avenge the loss last year in the semi-final to Kentucky.

The Badgers focused solely on winning only the second national championship in history for Wisconsin, the last coming 74 long years ago.  To accomplish their mission, they have one more game, against mighty Duke, four-time national champion, Monday night in the finals.

Wisconsin was able to trade punches with Kentucky for the entire game because its front court shot well enough from the perimeter to force the Wildcats' big men out of the paint, opening up driving lanes for the Badgers.

In the end, Kentucky wasted a series of possessions after it built its four-point lead.
The Wildcats repeatedly bled the clock dry, put the ball in the hands of one of the Harrison twins and asked them to create off the dribble against Koenig, but they were not able to score with anywhere near the ease they did during a first half when they combined for 18 points.

Three straight Kentucky possessions ended in shot-clock violations during the final five minutes and the twins were unable to get the better of the matchup with Bronson Koenig.

UK Coach John Calipari looked at the stat sheet: Kentucky had only six turnovers, hit 90% of its free throws, made 48% of its field goals, and lost.

He said his team struggled to guard Wisconsin's players, and the rebound battle -- which Wisconsin won by 12 -- was crucial.

Kamisky, who turned 22 on Saturday, was asked how the Badgers out rebounded a team that is the tallest in basketball.

"We stayed into them, attacking them, trying to do whatever we can," he said. "Just trying to keep them off the glass was one of our main priorities."

 Wisconsin Head Coach Bo Ryan said, "These guys just gutted it out."

Regardless of why it happened, the ending was still a shock for the legions of Kentucky fans making the trip to Indianapolis.  When most people expected Kentucky to move to the final step of a perfect season in the finals, the Badgers were the ones left celebrating.

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Can Anybody Stop the Kentucky Wildcat's Juggernaut in March Madness?

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In the Bluegrass State known for thoroughbred

champions, UK has that championship "pedigree"

Thirty-seven teams have tried to stop the Kentucky Wildcats from making NCAA basketball history and none succeeded.  In fact, since UK won their conference, then won their conference tournament, they have been getting stronger and stronger.

In three rounds of the NCAA tourney as only the strong survive from round to round, the amazing Kentucky Cats have won by a combined 75 points, an unheard of average victory of 25 points per game.

Well, to set the record straight, Kentucky already has the longest unbeaten streak in tournament history.  Indiana was the last unbeaten national champion thirty-nine years ago, in 1976, and they were the team tied for the most wins in history with a 32-0 record.

UCLA had four unbeaten teams during the John Wooden era from 1964-1973 when they won ten national titles, but they were 30-0 each time.  Only two other teams in NCAA history finished unbeaten, North Carolina in 1957 (32-0) and San Francisco in 1956 (29-0) finished unbeaten.

Kentucky has never finished unbeaten, even during the eight years they won they national championship.  However, in their 113 years of NCAA basketball they have the best record of all college teams with 2,214 victories and 672 losses in 2,886 games.

In the jargon of the Bluegrass State known for thoroughbred champions, the UK Wildcats have the "pedigree" to pull off the impossible, finish off winning the national title with a 40-0 record.

Coach John Calipari should have been named NCAA coach of the year, even his chief rival Rick Pitino from Louisville agrees.  However, there is an anti-Kentucky bias because of his "one and done" policy of recruiting and starting freshmen, recognizing they would jump to the NBA at the earliest possible moment.

Ironically, in this his sixth year at UK, so many freshmen returned he incorporate a platoon system to give the top ten players equal playing time, an act requiring the athletes to forgo personal statistics for the good of the team.  In this day and age teaching college basketball stars to be humble, team oriented and unselfish is rare indeed.

A "players-first" coach with a penchant for helping people reach their dreams, John Calipari has guided five teams to the Final Four, led one to a national championship and helped 31 players make it to the NBA during his 22-year college coaching career.

Calipari reached the mountaintop in his third year in Lexington, guiding Kentucky to its eighth national championship and his first national title. He is one of only two coaches to lead three different schools to a Final Four (UMass-1996; Memphis-2008; Kentucky-2011, 2012, 2014).

The Wildcats rode the trademark hard-nosed Calipari defense to the 2012 title, finishing the season as the nation's top-ranked team in field-goal percentage defense and blocked shots.

Following a 3.4 grade-point average in the 2013 spring semester -- the highest in Coach Cal's tenure at UK -- the Wildcats' scholarship players posted a 3.11 GPA for the second consecutive semester in the 2014 fall semester. It marked the seventh time in the last eight semesters Coach Cal's team earned a 3.0 or better.

As someone who prides himself on helping young men reach their dreams, he has placed 31 players in the NBA during his college coaching career, including 19 over his first five seasons at Kentucky. The 19 picks over that five-season span is the most of any coach.

So here we are, UK may be playing for the national title for the third time in three years, if only they can win three more games.  I say history awaits the Kentucky Wildcats and that no one will stop the Kentucky juggernaut.

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The NCAA March Madness - the greatest sports event in the world - amateur or professional - in terms of money that is!

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In spite of the fact college basketball is an amateur sport, there is nothing amateur about the way money is generated from the NCAA playoffs.  So massive is the revenue that it far surpasses even the Super Bowl.

Perhaps a better gauge of popularity is the amount people bet on the games and here Las Vegas knows the winner.  For every dollar bet on the Super Bowl, at least seven dollars are bet during March Madness, well over $7 billion.

In fact, if you combine revenue from the entire NFL playoffs including the Super Bowl, it is one third less than the NCAA playoffs.  If you combined all the revenue from the professional NBA, Major League Baseball, and National Hockey League playoffs, it is still one third less than the NCAA playoffs.
    

King Midas is alive and well in NCAA country.

When it comes to college basketball, one might be driven crazy by all the constant changes in conference members, the odd television broadcast schedules, the incessant drive for perfection, and the big business aspects.

There is a reason for these things as big business is big bucks.

Of course in spite of all the billions of dollars spent during March Madness, the players, those gladiators in the ring, get nothing.

But ad revenue is just a small part of the story. Investopedia identifies four more extremely lucrative ways the tournament makes money, none of which goes to the players:

1) Broadcast rights: In April 2010, the NCAA inked a deal with CBS that made the network its exclusive March Madness outlet. The contract lasts for 14 years and is worth a whopping $10.8 billion. This contract alone is projected to generate $771 million per year for the NCAA.

2) "The basketball fund": The NCAA's annual March Madness revenue is divided among the different basketball-playing schools and conferences (i.e. the Pac-12, SEC, etc.) based on factors such as schools' numbers of sports teams, scholarships awarded and tournament performances.

Conferences also have a hand in divvying up these large money pots (between 2005 and 2011, the top-earning Big East conference made $86.7 million) either evenly amongst schools or based on March Madness performance and revenue generated. According to Forbes, a team's trip to the Final Four earns its conference $9.5 million.

3) Ticket sales and sponsorships: During March Madness, tickets and sponsors generate about $40 million in revenue. Combined with the money from the broadcast rights, this accounts for 96% of the NCAA's total annual revenue.

4) Wagers: What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, especially if it involves an unlucky March Madness bet. Americans wager an estimated $7 billion a year on the tournament. That is $1 billion more than the Super Bowl.

Also, consider the average ticket price at face value for the final four in Indianapolis is about $1,400 per person with fees up to $500.  Of course if Kentucky gets in, from the neighboring state, the scalped price may have no ceiling.

Finally, the economic impact of the NCAA tournament for host cities generates millions and millions of dollars in local revenue not to mention the Friday through Monday night schedule for the Final Four, meaning people will spend four days to see two games.

Because of the complexity of the money trail, I am including an excellent report done by Bloomberg Business on the business of money and the NCAA March Madness.  You would do well to review it in detail.

March Madness Makers and Takers

The way the NCAA distributes the staggering revenue from the basketball tournament has created a polarized system where some schools make money and others just take it.

By David Ingold and Adam Pearce | March 18, 2015

Twenty five years ago, the NCAA decided something had to be done about March Madness money. The year before, CBS agreed to pay a record $1 billion to broadcast the 1991-1997 tournaments. That was fine with the powerhouse basketball schools that routinely made it into the postseason: Under the rules at the time, they divided most of the revenue based on the number of games they won.

Conference officials feared that without a change, a handful of schools would get rich while others got nothing, and the student athletes competing in the tournament would face increasing financial pressure to win games.

Annual TV revenue from NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament $800 million CBS and Turner Broadcasting begin $10.8 billion , 14-year deal Basketball Fund goes into effect after CBS nearly triples annual revenue to $143 million ,TV rights switch to CBS from NBC Source: NCAA reports Note: Chart shows the average annual rate over the course of a contract.

The Basketball Fund Is Born

So in 1990 the NCAA created the “basketball fund,” a plan intended to more fairly divvy up tournament revenue and parcel it out among the country’s Division I schools.

The new plan cut the amount of the payout that’s directly tied to teams’ wins and losses. Most of the tournament’s TV revenue is now earmarked for things like academic programs and financial assistance for student athletes. Even schools that don’t play in the postseason get a cut.

The remaining amount makes up the basketball fund—and it’s no small pot. Last year the fund totaled about 28 percent of the tournament’s TV revenue, or about $194 million. These coveted dollars are won or lost on the basketball court, and the battle among schools to claim them accounts for a lot of the Madness each March.

The tournament TV contract brought in $700 million in 2014… $498 million went to Division I schools… with $194 million given via the basketball fund… $199 million this year … and that amount keeps growing.

How It Works

Teams earn a “unit” for every tournament game they play up to the championship game. So a team that makes it to the final four will earn five units. Each unit is worth a specific amount each year. Instead of paying schools directly for the units they win, however, the NCAA now gives the units to a team’s conference, and the conference is responsible for distributing the money to its members. A conference can divide up the money however it wants, but the NCAA suggests schools evenly split the payout, and most conferences follow the recommendation.

The End of the $300,000 Free Throw

One goal of the basketball fund was to reduce the financial impact of individual wins and losses. Under the old system in which schools were paid each year for their wins, a player who missed a single game-winning free throw cost his team $300,000 or more. The fund changed that by spreading out the tournament payments over six years; and since that money is also split among the dozen or so teams in a conference, the dollar value attached to any single game is diluted.

Every unit won in 2015 will be worth at least $1.6 million over six years. For a strong team like Kentucky, which might earn as many as five units if it makes it to the final four, that once meant a massive payout at the end of the tournament. Under the basketball fund, those units will be split with the other 13 schools in the Southeastern Conference—dropping the per-school value of its units earned this year to about $560,000 over the next six years.

Conferences Are Key

One big effect of the fund is that it shifts the emphasis from winning teams to winning conferences. All 350 Division I teams will get a cut of this year’s $200 million basketball fund—but strong conferences with many winning teams will rack up more units and take home a much bigger share of the pile.

The nation’s top basketball programs have historically been in one of six major conferences: the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-12, Big 12, and SEC. These conferences only account for 20 percent of the teams in Division I, but they’ll likely receive about 60 percent of the basketball fund payout this year.

The fund is supposed to be about rewarding performance, and it’s fitting that the top programs will receive the largest cut of the money. But the strongest conferences also include schools with weak basketball programs—and they get an equal cut of the winnings even if they didn’t play a single game in the tournament.

Basketball Fund earnings by conference, 1991 - 2015

A System of Makers and Takers

This focus on conferences instead of teams has resulted in a system of makers and takers, where colleges in a conference lean on a few key schools with powerful basketball teams to earn money for everyone else.

Take Michigan State, a Big Ten school that’s earned 21 units during the current six-year payout period. That translates to about $5.1 million for the Big Ten in 2015 alone. After its earnings are lumped together with the rest of the conference and equally doled out, MSU will get back one-third of the amount it’s put in. Other top makers include Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina.

This effect is magnified in smaller conferences, where a single team could be responsible for the bulk of tournament appearances. Gonzaga University plays in the West Coast conference and is responsible for half of its revenue. It gets back an even smaller share, roughly 20 percent of what it contributes.

The inverse can be true for weak programs in strong conferences. An extreme case would be Northwestern University, which also plays in the Big Ten. Unlike Michigan State, Northwestern has never made it to the NCAA tournament – not once since 1939.

Despite contributing zero units over the last 30 years, Northwestern has received an estimated $24.5 million from the fund. This year, the school will receive roughly $2.2 million, the same amount as Michigan State.

The chart below compares how much schools have earned for their conference and how much they've gotten back. It assumes conferences equally split their basketball fund revenue like the NCAA suggests. Looking at all the schools together, it's clear that some are getting back a lot more than they put in.

Makers and takers by conference, 1991 - 2015

Movers and Shakers

Schools are continually changing conferences, typically to improve their financial situation. Though football-related money is the biggest motivator, all that jumping around also has a big impact on the basketball fund, since schools rely heavily on one another for units. Conferences with multiple earners can tough out the loss of a powerful team. But the departure of a breadwinner can mean a huge financial hit for weaker conferences.

Take the Horizon League, a mid-sized conference with schools from the Midwest that doesn’t have the depth of the ACC or Big Ten. Twice the conference has lost its top earner to the Atlantic 10, a more financially attractive conference. Xavier left in 1995, Butler in 2012. The last of the units Butler earned for the Horizon League expire in 2016, and if another program doesn't step up, the League’s revenue could drop to $1.6 million in 2017 from $5 million in 2011.

The West Coast conference now faces a similar situation with Gonzaga University. Located in Spokane, Washington, Gonzaga earns more than half the conference’s units and is a #2 seed in the tournament. A strong March Madness showing could increase its attractiveness to more powerful conferences. The school is already rumored to be a contender to join the new Big East. That leaves West Coast schools to cheer Gonzaga's success, count the millions it brings them, and pray everything stays the same.

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Pythagoras & Aristotle Report on March Madness - How peculiar those Americans - The Sweet Sixteen

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Enough from the sports analysts, arm chair point guards, loud mouth fanatics, news and entertainment personalities, geeks and computers, after two or three rounds, the first of many odd math facts attached to March Madness, we have sixteen teams left.

The bracket says three rounds were played but reality says we went from 64 to 32 teams (1st round), then 32 to 16 teams (2nd round).  My math says two rounds.  We have left 16 to 8 (3rd round), 8 to 4 (4th round), 4 to 2 (5th round), and the championship (6th round).  Since when did a play in by a couple of teams constitute a tournament round?

Clearly, no one involved in the billion dollar March Madness money machine worries about details like accuracy, math, or specifics, just the bottom line.  Well the bottom line started out with Kentucky the favorite and after two or three rounds, nothing has changed.

The first rounds destroyed the East coast, or specifically the Northeast, as a perennial powerhouse of teams which seems a logical shift, but that is part of the analysis to come.

For insights free of the often-hysterical outbursts by all our specialists, I have channeled Pythagoras, ancient Greek mathematician, and Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher, to get their analysis of what is going on.

First, they offered as background a review of the definition of "Madness", as used in the made-for-TV phrase March Madness.  Does the term "Madness" contribute to the branding of the NCAA championship?

Here is their composite definition:

mad·ness

noun

Madness

The definition of madness:

1. insanity, mental illness, dementia, derangement, lunacy, instability

2. folly, foolishness, idiocy, stupidity, insanity, lunacy, silliness 

3. frenzied or chaotic activity

The synonyms for various states of madness:

1. mania, psychosis,

2. craziness

3. bedlam, mayhem, chaos, pandemonium, craziness, uproar, turmoil, disorder, all hell broken loose, (three-ring) circus

According to my learned ancients, it would appear the term indeed describes the state of chaos resulting from March Madness.

Pythagoras was most interested in the mathematical puzzles, assumptions, thesis and hypothesis involved in seeding, results, conferences, and all the other trivia associated with the payoffs.  Some of his observations included conference power rating, note the numbers represent the conference standings of the tournament teams, not the NCAA seedings.

So far through the first two or three rounds here are conference results.

Atlantic Coast Conference

Conference champion (1) Virginia lost

(2) Duke, (3) Notre Dame, (4) Louisville, (5) North Carolina, (7) North Carolina State won

Pac 12

One team lost

(1) Arizona, (2) Utah, and (4) UCLA won

Big East

Top five teams lost

Only (6) Xavier remains

Big Ten

Five teams lost

(1) Wisconsin and (3) Michigan State remain

Big 12

Five teams lost

(3) Oklahoma and (4) West Virginia remain

SEC

Four teams lost

(1) Kentucky remains

Missouri Valley

One team lost

(1) Wichita State won

West Coast

One team lost

(1) Gonzaga remains

Pythagoras is also curious about the relationship between tournament seedings, and actual results to date, so here are the stats.

Seeds Surviving

 1.        three teams  Kentucky, Wisconsin, Duke

 2.        two teams     Arizona, Gonzaga

 3.        two teams     Notre Dame, Oklahoma

 4.        two teams     North Carolina, Louisville

 5.        two teams     West Virginia, Utah

 6.        one team       Xavier

 7.        two teams     Wichita State, Michigan State

 8.        one team       North Carolina State

11.        one team       UCLA

Other Pythagorean factoids to bear in mind:

No team whose name began with a "V" survived the opening rounds, four teams lost.

Three teams whose name began with a "N" and three whose name began with a "W" made the Sweet Sixteen, along with two whose name began with "U".

North Carolina was the state with the most teams, three, while Kentucky and California had two teams each.

Roughly speaking, the geographic distribution of teams is:

Northeast - 1

Southeast - 3

Midwest - 8

West - 4

Of those from the Midwest, six were east of the Mississippi River, and two were west of the Mississippi River.

As far as mascots, which interested Aristotle, here are the teams, seeding and mascots.  As you can see, there are two Wildcats, Kentucky and Arizona, and little else in common among the schools.  Aristotle seemed most interested in the Spartans of Michigan State.

1 Kentucky Wildcats       

1 Duke Blue Devils      

1 Wisconsin Badgers    

2 Arizona Wildcats       

2 Gonzaga Bulldogs ('Zags)        

3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish   

3 Oklahoma Sooners     

4 Louisville Cardinals      

4 North Carolina Tar Heels      

5 Utah Utes        

5 West Virginia Mountaineers    

6 Xavier Muskeeters          

7  Michigan State Spartans     

7 Wichita State Shockers  

8 NC State Wolfpack       

11 UCLA Bruins

 

   

Of course one stat that is not in the formula is the fan intensity and the cheerleader impact and we can thank the lowest seeded team for bringing along the highest rated cheerleaders to the tourney, eleven seeded UCLA.

So what do my friends Pythagoras & Aristotle think of this unique American past time? 

Stay tuned.

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