About This Year's NCAA March Madness Basketball

One of the problems with championship playoffs in various sports is that, unless you walk away with the title, your team's final game is bound to be a loss that will get under your skin for the entire off-season.  In each of the men and women's "March Madness" NCAA basketball championship tournaments for 2022, after so many teams struggled for so much in the latter part of the regular season just to "make" the tournament, the initial fields of 68 have been brutally whittled down to 16 in the span of five days...this weekend it will go down to 4.  I remember in 2014 when "my" Florida Gators, then under head coach Billy Donovan, made that Final Four and had visions of yet another championship.  But Connecticut, the eventual tournament winner that year, got hot and eliminated UF in the semifinal...I hardly ever hear of that wonderful season spoken in happy terms...why?  Because the Gators didn't win it all!  I for one did think of it as a glorious season...folks just have to get a better sense of perspective about what winning means...

On the women's side Florida bowed out early, 69-52 to the University of Central Florida.  But they had a great turnaround season with their new coach Kelly Rae Finley...I'm happy for them.  The men's team didn't make the NCAA championship tourney but were invited to the National Invitation Tournament, losing to Xavier in the second round...good for them, too.  Their coach, Mike White, left the team after their conference tournament to work for Georgia...Florida just hired San Francisco Dons coach Todd Golden to replace him after he led them to their first NCAA tournament appearance since 1998.  The Gators men's team, I strongly believe, has had issues for years about poor shooting...2022 was no exception.  Maybe the new coach can emphasize this need in his upcoming recruiting.  As for the remaining teams in the tournament, for the men my favorites North Carolina, Miami and Kansas are still in there...with the women the TV coverage is not only poorer, but there is much less parity between the elite teams and the rest of the field that has made the men's side more interesting to watch: sadly, it's always seemed to be that way. Well, come Thursday we will see the games resume with the Regional semifinals...