Yeah, KU lost, but mostly UNI won.

Ugh, I didn't really want to post anything on the KU/UNI game, but since pretty much everyone in existence (and I don't just mean on here, but everywhere) has had their say, I feel compelled to do the same. Which probably says more about me than it does about anyone else. Whatever.

The problem I have with what 97% of everyone is saying is that it focuses almost solely on KU. On how they "choked." On how they "didn't take UNI seriously." On how they "didn't play up to their potential." I'm not actually sure I would disagree with any of these things, and obviously I was surprised that UNI won. But I wasn't fall-on-the-floor shocked by the outcome. And I think approaching the game from this KU-centric direction doesn't tell the real story.

I watched the game in a bar in Lawrence surrounded by KU fans (not on purpose, exactly... a strange confluence of events led me to be there at that time). Now, being a Shocker fan, and, on a smaller scale, a Missouri Valley fan, I'd seen UNI play five or six times this year. So I knew what to expect. The funny thing was, I quickly realized the pro-KU crowd was busy complaining about exactly the things I expected to see from UNI. Their defensive strategy is to clog up the middle and make the other team shoot jump shots over them. So what happened? Sherron Collins spent the entire game getting frustrated that he couldn't get to the rim. Moreover, UNI is one of the dirtiest teams I've seen this year, bumping, pushing, pulling, and yet they somehow never get called for it. The result? The entire bar wailing about how UNI was getting all the calls. UNI loves to slow things down and pick the other team apart. Meaning? The KU crowd was aghast that KU never got around to "running right over them."

Basically, it turned out that the game I watched was pretty much identical, in style, at least, to every single other game I've seen UNI play this year. UNI exerted their will. So why does that mean KU choked? That's just not what I saw. I saw one team play exactly the way they wanted to and beat the other team. Which is sort of the point of basketball.

Yeah, I get it, KU was the overall #1 seed, and even I figured they'd probably go ahead and win the national championship. But anyone who has paid any attention to UNI this year knew exactly what they were going to get, and they got it.