Tonight marks the end of happy time for The Bull Gator and most of its readers I believe. From early September until tonight we’ve had either college football games, college basketball games, or both. I personally am a NHL fan, but I’m not into the NBA as much as I used to be (although I try) and I consistently struggle to follow Major League Baseball for the entire season. College football and basketball – and more specifically Florida and USF – are my focus and where this site tends to generate most of its content. Without the games, life gets slow. Luckily there are plenty of stories and enough news out there to keep it going, but tonight marks the end of the games for nearly five months. So while you wait until 9:23 tonight, just remember that it’s almost over.
On to tonight’s game…
Say what you want about BYU’s Jimmer Fredette, but UConn’s Kemba Walker is the player of the year. Fredette keeps picking up the honors, but Walker has led the Huskies to 10-straight wins, a Big East Tournament Championship, and a spot in the National Championship Game. This is yet another example of why awards shouldn’t be given out until the season it completely over. How can you have a player of the year if the year is still going? Fredette is deserving of the awards – or at least he was – but with every additional win, the honors should go to Walker. Regardless of how many trophies Fredette takes home, Walker has a chance at two tonight that are exponentially more important – the National Championship and the NCAA Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
As for Butler, it’s a good story. A nice one you may look back at one day and recall when an unexpected school made not one, but two National Championship Games. But if they don’t win tonight, it doesn’t mean as much. These Cinderella (if that’s what you want to call it) stories are great, but we hype them a little too much when it comes to the NCAA Tournament. They’re only truly great if the story is completed and not cut short. Not to take away from Butler’s accomplishments, but at this point they have to win it. You can get to the big game year after year after year, but unless you win one, people will only remember you losing, not the path you took to get there. Ask the Buffalo Bills about that. Congrats go out to the Bulldogs for making another title game, but to truly go down in history they have to finish the story.
As a Gator fan, I want the team that knocked off Florida to win it all. As a sports fan, I’d like to see the little guy go ahead and do it this once. We’ve all seen UConn win before (I got to see them doing it in person…on that note, go to a Final Four if you can, it’s a fun few days) and I’m all for the Huskies falling tonight. I have nothing against them and clearly appreciate Walker and his talent, but I stick with the guy that beat my guy. And I’d kind of like to see Butler truly become a story. Not just another Cinderella that couldn’t finish it off in the end. No one wants to hang the NCAA Runner-Up banner, and definitely not two years in a row.