REQUESTED: A National Championship Blog

This marks a first in Viva La Vita history. Last night, as I was casually watching the NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship, I got a text message from my buddy JB. JB told me he was hoping for a National Championship blog the next day. My immediate reaction was "dang, this will be tough for me." I've admitted I'm not a big college sports fan. I consider myself to know the most about the NBA and NFL. When it comes to baseball, I would consider myself to have been a know-it-all pre-2010. As I talked about in my Complete Major League Baseball Season Preview, there was a short time where I stopped following baseball as closely as I used to. I would describe myself as someone that is more than a casual fan, but is also trying to know more about the game. Actually, I would say that I would like to know more about all sports. As for the NHL, I love watching hockey. Hockey's a great sport, but I don't know a whole lot about it. I love watching my Blackhawks and Penguins, but I don't claim to be an expert or a super-fan. Golf is something I'm also interested in and enjoy watching. And then there's college sports. The thing about college sports is it differs every year how much I know about them. And that's a result of players coming in and out every year. This college basketball season I didn't watch a lot of. I also talked about this in my March Madness Bracket Journal, which has more views than any other article on this site, and I still have no idea why.

So anyway, JB texts me requesting a National Championship blog. I knew this would be a challenge for me. And then I thought that I should embrace this challenge, go out of my comfort zone, and hopefully become a better writer in the process. So I decided that I would take JB's request. I don't just write this blog for myself, but I write it for those of you that want to read it. I'm always open to taking requests and hearing your ideas for how I can make this blog better. So yeah, as I said this is a first in Viva La Vita's two and a half month history as this is the first request I've gotten and the first that I will write about. So here it goes.

Last night's championship game marked the end of a pretty good tournament. There were a lot of story-lines in this tournament. You had the Florida Gulf Coast Eagles, who shocked everyone with their appearance in the Sweet Sixteen, something that had never been done by a 15 seed before. You had one of the greatest tournament games ever in my opinion in the Kansas-Michigan Sweet Sixteen game. You had another "shocker" with the 9 seed Wichita Shockers making the Final Four. You had Spike Albrecht coming off the bench and putting up 17 points in the first half, which felt just like the film Rudy, in the actual championship game. You had Kevin Ware messing up his leg in the worst way possible. I won't go in to details on that last one, but what amazed me was how his team rallied behind that injury and came back to win the next three games, never giving up and winning for Ware. Yes, there were a lot of big story-lines in this tournament.

Do I think this is the best tournament ever? I don't. What makes a tournament great? I think what makes it is what makes a Survivor season great; it's unpredictability and closeness. However, I won't bury the lead. As I was writing this blog I started to get off topic and write about whether or not this was the best tournament ever. If you guys want, I will share my thoughts with you in a separate blog. But let's not get too far off topic and let's talk about the game.

Last night's game was truly a great match-up. It was great to see Michigan back in the Final Four, for the first time since the Fab Five was running things. I'm happy to say Michigan hoops is back. Over the course of the regular season, they were a team I enjoyed occasionally watching. Not only did they feature the sons of two former NBA all-stars- players I think are often overlooked- but they also had quite possibly the best player in the country in Trey Burke, and a dominant big man in Mitch McGary.

On the other side of the bracket, the Louisville Cardinals played their hearts out to get to that game. When Kevin Ware went down with a broken leg, no one expected Luke Hancock to step in to his spot and scored 52 points over the course of the next three games. The Cardinals were well-coached by Rick Pitino and played out of their minds to get to where they were. We all knew this was going to be a good game.

As the game started, Michigan got off to an early lead. However, Trey Burke got himself in to foul trouble, which had him sitting for a big portion of the first half. In this time, 5'11 freshman guard Spike Albrecht came in off the bench and surprised us all, scoring 17 points in the half. Albrecht had averaged 1.5 points on the season. Michigan held the lead going in to half-time. Throughout the first half there were a lot of iffy calls and there were a lot of missed calls.

This trend continued in the second half. A lot of people said this was the reason for Michigan's loss. I don't think this was the case. There was one big call that I will get to in a bit that I think made a big difference, but I wouldn't blame the officials for Michigan's loss. This was a hard game to call. Both teams were playing fast and physical. I don't think the officiating heavily favored one side either.

In the second half, Michigan was clinging on to a lead, but was getting outplayed by Louisville. I expected Louisville to take the lead and with it take control of the game. The first ten or twelve minutes of the second half were great. There were a lot of big plays, alley-oops and dunks. It felt like we were seeing FGCU playing against itself. Tim Hardaway Jr. has hops. The dude got up there on one of his dunks, almost reminiscent of his Hall of Fame father. Something I've noticed while watching Tim Jr. play though is that he takes a lot of ill-advised shots. He's a good talent. Amazingly he's six inches taller than his father. He's very athletic and is a good scorer, but he needs to take smarter shots. I think he could be a good player in the NBA and he would be perfect to go to a team like the Spurs in the second round, if he were to declare for the draft this year. But as I was saying, this game was exciting and fun to watch.

However, there was a time in this game that I thought became harder to watch. Once Louisville got the lead, they never lost control of it. While Michigan was still hanging in there, they never regained control. They were hanging in there and hanging in there just like they did in their Sweet Sixteen game against Kansas. In that game, I thought it was over and I thought they were done. But I was wrong and I was hoping that they would do the same thing in this game. But Louisville was too good, and too well-coached. At one point I believe Louisville's lead was at six and Michigan was starting to cut in to it, and then on a fast break Trey Burke jumps out of nowhere for an amazing blocked shot. Only problem was, there was a foul called on the play. This aggravated me, because it didn't look like a foul to me. They were letting the game get rather physical and having a lot of no-calls, so I was surprised that a sweet, clean block was ruled a foul.

I thought that this call sealed the win for Louisville. If there was a no-call, I think Michigan builds some momentum and comes right back in to it. But with the free throws, Louisville adds two more points and stops all momentum Michigan was building up. This was frustrating, but at the same time I don't think you can take anything away from Louisville and Rick Pitino. Even when guard Russ Smith was cold as ice, Louisville found a way to win. This was Peyton Siva's game. The guy racked up 18 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists, and 4 steals. He had a great all-around game, doing everything. Passing, scoring, rebounding and helping his team create turnovers on the defensive end. Luke Hancock shot the team back in to the game. This game was about a team of destiny that came to play and win for their boy Kevin Ware. This was a great story. While I was rooting for Michigan, I can live with Louisville winning.

This was a good game, but I don't think it was a great game. It would have been great if Michigan came back, or if the lead was bouncing back and forth, but really this game was over with three or four minutes left. It wasn't as down to the wire as I had hoped and expected it to be.

Other than that, I don't have a lot to add. This was my attempt at writing a college basketball game recap and I hope it was worthwhile. Like I said, I don't expect this to be my best or most popular blog, but I tried my best to give you, the readers, what you want to see. Special thanks to JB for the request, and a thank you to you readers. I've got more stuff planned for this week as I continue to post at least one blog per day. Let me hear your thoughts on my Facebook fan page, in the comments below, or on Twitter @vellvita7.