Twisted bracket leads to straight-up Ultimate Game
ST. LOUIS -- Sixty-three games into the 2005 NCAA Tournament, your bracket is trashed. Hey, it's OK. Your boss' bracket is trashed. Your neighbor's bracket is trashed. My bracket? Trashed. The 2005 NCAA Tournament has been a three-week mess, from Wisconsin-Milwaukee's run to the Sweet 16 to the first-round losses of Kansas and Syracuse.
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| Roy Williams and Bruce Weber won't be sharing laughs come Monday night. (AP) |
Illinois entered the NCAA Tournament ranked No. 1 in the country. North Carolina is ranked No. 2.
Monday night they play, No. 1 vs. No. 2. Illinois vs. North Carolina. The game everybody wanted to see. You wanted it. I wanted it. Hell, Magic Johnson wanted it.
"That's the game I want to see," Johnson told CBS SportsLine.com earlier this month, before his alma mater, Michigan State, made a Final Four run of its own.
Not since Johnson's Spartans played Larry Bird and Indiana State in 1979 has the NCAA Tournament funneled the two most eye-pleasing teams into the final game. In the tournament's brutal, pressure-packed atmosphere, eye-pleasing teams don't always survive the five games necessary to reach the title game. When they do? The country watches. That 1979 game between Magic and Larry remains the highest-rated NCAA title game in history.
You've got to go back even further, though, to find the last time the two top-ranked teams in the final Associated Press poll met in the NCAA championship game. It was 1975, the end of the John Wooden dynasty, and No. 1 UCLA beat No. 2 Kentucky for Wooden's 10th and final title.
Thirty years later, we've finally got it again. No. 1 (Illinois) vs. No. 2 (North Carolina).
"This is the way the season should end," said UNC forward David Noel. "The best team will win."
The marquee alone is good enough, but the subplots are delicious:
- All-Stars vs. All-Stars. Four of Illinois' five starters have earned Big Ten player of the week honors this season ... and the fifth guy, Deron Williams, has earned a handful of All-American honors. UNC has four starters who will get drafted by the NBA, and a fifth guy, freshman Marvin Williams off the bench, who could be the No. 1 overall pick whenever he comes out. You could form a fine All-American team -- an All-American first team -- from Illinois' Deron Williams and Dee Brown, North Carolina's Raymond Felton and Sean May, and either Luther Head (Illinois) or Rashad McCants (UNC) rounding out the unit. "We've played teams with a lot of talent," says Illinois' Williams. "But nothing like North Carolina."
- Illinois coach Bruce Weber trying to win a national title with a rotation that was recruited entirely by Bill Self. UNC coach Roy Williams trying to win a national title with a rotation that, other than Marvin Williams, was recruited by Matt Doherty.
