I'll try and keep the Jayhawk rah-rah talk to a minimum, but you'll have to bear with me if you're not a KU fan.
On the KU game:
--Great, great game. Two huge defensive plays stand out: obviously, Kirk's block at the end, but also the charge on Walton that Langford drew. Even bigger.
--All the talk about what a shocker the win was is annoying. Arizona was, and should have been, favored, but it's not like this was Butler over Arizona. Man.
--KU is clicking. It feels different than last year. And a lot more fun, I have to say, because last year's Final Four was 100% expected. This one isn't an upset, per se, but they've had a much rougher go of it.
--I didn't think Jim Nantz could get more annoying than his constant references to the first Arizona-Kansas game, when there was never, ever any acknowledgement that maybe losing in that humiliating a fashion might have actually helped Kansas. But then he actually became more annoying when he said that Nick Collison's lifelong dream was to stand on the podium and hear "One Shining Moment". My lifelong dream is to beat the living shit out of Jim Nantz while Billy Packer stands and watches and sings "One Shining Moment."
On the other games:
--Marquette is really good, Wade particularly. I wish I could root for them. But no more. More on that in a bit.
--Could Oklahoma have choked any more than they did? Syracuse is a pain in the ass team with their zone and a lot of long players. But they have one scorer. Oklahoma was just terrible. Choke. That said, it is PREPOSTEROUS that Syracuse was put in that region. That was absolutely 100% a home game for them with that Albany crowd. Just total, total bullshit.
--I didn't see the Texas game--too late after staying up for KU. But it seems like they didn't play too well based on what I'm reading. Was the San Antonio crowd as loud for them as the Albany crowd? They got lucky with their bracket, but I think they should beat Syracuse.
Upcoming games:
I'm glad Kentucky lost, but KU will still have some problems with Marquette. As near as I can tell, they've really got no one who can answer Wade. Nash and Lee are probably going to get a lot of PT. Diener will likely struggle, because Hinrich plays a similar game but he's so much more experienced. One guy that really worries me is Novak--he's like 8 feet tall and nails the three with regularity. KU just doesn't have anybody tall enough to deal with him that can play on the perimeter.
Marquette really mixes up their defenses, and I suspect KU will have some adjustment problems here and there. But KU has a huge advantage on the interior with Collison and Graves (assuming Big Jeff plays like he did against AZ and not like he did against Duke, when he was Mr. Foul).
KU has two advantages, as I see it. The first may be small, but it helps that Marquette played such a tight game with Missouri (overtime, in fact) earlier in the tourney--Kansas played Missouri three times this season, and makes for really informed scouting when you can watch that tape while knowing Missouri's game so well. The second is absolutely enormous--experience. Marquette could quite easily get "happy to just be here" syndrome, and it's not just that KU has senior leadership--it's that they have senior Final Four-experienced leadership. And that counts for a lot--see Maryland last year. In 2001, they lose to Duke in the national semis, come back hardened for last year's Final Four, and win it.
I'm optimistic, and will pick KU as objectively as I can be. But Marquette has impressed the hell out of me, and I am worried.
As for the other game, I don't know. I have said before in this space that I am not impressed by Texas, and that they got lucky, I believe, in the bracket--the South was awfully easy, and things really broke their way, with MSU upsetting Maryland, with Florida (a weak two anyway) getting knocked out, and with LSU (a team I still believe would have given them trouble) getting mauled by Purdue. But they are top to bottom a better team than Syracuse, for sure. Still, I expect Syracuse to play loose, and the zone will hurt Texas a lot, because it makes Ford's slashing game a lot tougher and he's a bricklayer from the outside. (Sidenote: anyone else see a Mateen Cleaves-style NBA career for T.J. Ford? Great slasher, good passer, fast as hell, terrible shooter, about 4 1/2 feet tall?)
My prediction: all Big-12 final. But honestly any one of these teams could win it all. If I had to rank them in order of likely championships, I'd give a mild nudge to Kansas due to the experience factor, then Texas, then Marquette, then Syracuse. But Marquette is really good, and if they beat Kansas I think they'll win it all. And, like I said before, I like them, and will root for them if they do win that game. But for now, they are the enemy.
12:12:40 PM 
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