SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
It’s not so bad this men’s 2023 Final Four national basketball tournament.
Played Saturday at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Tx., it’s certainly getting a lot of play, for instance, via jokes, some who’s who and what’s where, and remembrance of Duke and North Carolina in the Final Four last time.
That worked, now can this one work with a trio of first-timers getting to that level to the first time and meeting with pre-semifinal favorite Connecticut as it makes its sixth appearance and tries to wrap up a third championship.
Huskies’ head coach Dan Hurley doesn’t build it up, he just agrees that his team is playing very well and in a comfortable position.
“We got away to a good start,” he said on Thursday, “we faded somewhat at the midway point, and then just found our way again, and we still haven’t won anything.”
Oops, can’t forget who else was invited for the doubleheader that brings No. 4 UConn into game two where he will meet up with No. 5 Miami, and after the opener pairs No. 9 Florida Atlantic University with No. 5 San Diego State.
It’s usually about two or three number ones, a two and a three, something like that.
But this is nothing like not, not even UConn, which just happens to have more size, more experience, more depth and a knowledgeable coach like Hurley, whose younger brother Bob, Jr., recently signed a new six-year contract to continue as head men’s coach with Arizona State.
Now Miami? That was a program that was initially shut down for 14 years in the 1970s and 1980s due to lack of interest.
The school in Coral Gables was too busy building a football program that would become (in)famous for winning with a certain panache.
But as a hoops program, once they signed up former George Mason head coach Jim Larranaga, they’ve put together some interesting seasons, with this the best one yet.
FAU from Boca Raton right off I-95 in South Florida. Good won-lost record, good season, came into the top 25 at No. 21, and then fell out near the end of the regular season.
Maybe the Owls are even better than a No. 9 seeding. On campus, they have students constantly bringing it up, and now they’ll just have to resort to rooting for their school team.
Coached by Dusty May, FAU can be called a relative new kid on the block, a member of Division I since 1993 when they were based in the retirement community of Boca, a locale better known for its 4:30 p.m.dinner specials than its 7 p.m.tip-offs.
Ah, San Diego State. It is the perennial power of the Mountain West Conference, but has never gotten this far before. The Aztecs almost did in 2020 when they were 30-2 and generally slotted as a No. 1 seed, albeit still an underdog against stacked Kansas that was the odds-on favorite.
But COVID-19 hit and wiped the San Diego State season off the boards, plus the remainder of the campaign for all.
Said current San Diego State head coach Brian Dutcher: “There are a lot of really good teams in college basketball, and the difference between winning and losing is paper thin.”
Sounds good coach, now will anyone outside of the truest of diehards bother to watch how times change. You watched last year’s Final Four, you’re going to watch this year’s, and next year, who knows? ‘
Here, check out how the price of Final Four tickets depend on the field. As of Thursday, a pair of seats in the nosebleed section for Saturday’s attraction were going for about $100 each on the secondary market.
Now a year ago, shortly after the Duke-North Carolina game match-up was set, the average price for these same seats nearly doubled to $800 a ticket.
And heck, a reminder that we’re a scant 365 days removed from a completely different sort of get-together.
A year ago, the tournament felt perfect. The country got its dose of Cinderella — namely when small-school 15th seed Saint Peter’s College from Jersey City made a first-of-its-kind run into the Elite Eight.
Then a sense of perfectly timed normalcy took over.
But being this event is being played in Houston, can’t forget the movie at the time at the Astrodome when the Little League Bad News Bears were told by the umpires and officials to leave the field and the annoyed fans let loose with “Let them play, let them play, let them play.” which will be done at this Final Four.
