As a disembodied spirit in 1939, 25 years before I was born, I started the division I national championship in college basketball, on March 17 of that year.
How did I form the NCAA Division I college basketball championship more than two decades before I was born? I'm very clever.
Some sports gurus claim that winning the National Championship in college basketball is the hardest trophy to acquire in all of sports, and they have a solid point. There are more than 350 division I teams each for both the men and women's teams, and only 64 of those teams for both genders make the playoffs. Once the 64-team playoff tourney begins in mid-March of every year, it's a one and done game for every team. Simple, win, and play again until a single loss.
To win the National Championship, the champs have to win six consecutive playoff games. This year's tournament of champions for both sexes did not disappoint.
The New Jersey Saint Peter's Peacocks men's team made history when they became the first 15th seeded team entering the tournament to make it to the Elite 8, three wins shy of winning the national championship.
I won't ramble on and on about every game I enjoyed while on Covid 19 leave, but last year's champions, the Baylor Bears from the University of Waco Texas erased a 25-point deficit in the second half to tie the North Carlina Tar Heels to force over-time. The Tar Heels knocked off last year's champions in OT, and made it to this year's championship game themselves, losing a thriller to the Kansas State Jayhawks.
This year's men's champions, the Kansas Jayhawks fought tooth and nail to reach the zenith of college basketball. Early in the tournament, the Creighton Bluejays from the University of Nebraska gave the Jayhawks a run for the money. At the halfway point of that game, there were four ties and nine lead changes. The Jayhawks led at halftime over the Bluejays, 39-38, and won the game by seven points, 79-72.
The North Carolina Tar Heels met the Duke Blue Devils, also from that state for the first time ever in the men's Final Four and won by four points to face the Jayhawks for all the marbles.
The Kansas Jayhawks set an NCAA championship game record when they came back from 16 points to beat the Tar Heels, 72-69 to hoist this year's Naismith Trophy, in honor of James Naismith, the inventor of basketball.
On the women's side of the spectrum of spectacular, history was made when the Connecticut Huskies played the South Carolina Gamecocks in the women's championship game in Minnesota in front of a sell-out crowd. The Huskies women's team made it to the Final Four for the 14th consecutive year, and their star player, sophomore guard, Paige Bueckers scored 14 points against last year's champion's, the Stanford Cardinals, to face the Gamecocks in the Finals.
It was the first time ever in the women's Finals, two national players of the year faced one another in the championship game. Bueckers was last year's Associated Press National Player of the year, and the Gamecocks, Aliyah Boston was this year's AP player of the year.
UConn's women's coach Geno Auriemma, now 11-1 in title games with Gamecocks coach, Dawn Staley, 2-0.
The South Carolina Gamecocks were the number one team in the nation from start to finish, and they were simply bigger and better than the UConn Huskies, winning easily, 64-49, to claim their second championship in school history under the same coach, Dawn Staley, who also coached the Gamecocks to a championship in 2017. Bueckers was interictal in cutting the Gamecocks lead to seven points in the 3rd quarter, but the Gamecocks with the aid of their senior guard Destanni Henderson had a fantastic time to have a season high, 26 points, and was the leading scorer for both teams. Boston, as usual, was dominant in the paint.
Bueckers has two more years in the college circuit if she doesn't go pro early. As an 8th grader, she was a starter for Hopkins High School in Minnesota.
Mark Izzy Schurr
