All tournament team

Shabazz Napier - U Conn MOP 

Julius Randle - Kentucky

DeAndre Daniels - U Conn

James Young - Kentucky

Ryan Boatright - U Conn

The Commissioner's Cup was officially passed from defending champion Ralph Trevino to members of the SID team. (from left to right, SID John Logan, SID Bill Starkweather, SID Don Owens, Ralph Trevino)  missing is SID Drew Logan

Wrapping up the tournament:

After a couple of Final 4 games on Saturday night that were nail biters, especially the Kentucky / Wisconsin game won by a 25 foot bomb, the Monday final game was a little anticlimatic.  When we were talking before the game started, everybody had Kentucky winning the game.  Who wouldn't project that from these kids who had just marched through the tough Midwest region defeating # 1 Wichita State by a buzzer beater, # 4 Louisville by 5 points then # 2 Michigan by 3 points.  Then they dispatched # 2 WIsconsin in the Final Four with another last second shot.  The talk around town was that they were too big and too physical for U Conn.

Connecticut had other plans with their upper class lineup.  They didn't play afraid and actually the Connecticut guard tandem of Napier and Boatright were too much for the young Harrison twins who were constantly being harassed into turnovers and bad decisions.  This was totally different than what Florida did with Kentucky in the Saturday night Final 4 game.   Florida, another veteran team, folded like a house of cards against the pups from Kentucky.

The 2014 All tournament team was comprised of Kentucky's Julius Randle & James Young and from Connecticut, Ryan Boatright, DeAndre Daniels & Shabazz Napier MOP.

I thought this 2014 tournament was as good as it gets.  It's no wonder that the 3 week period in late March into early April catches so much attention.  Every year we talk about how great the tournament was after conclusion and really this year was no exception.   Although the tournament champion Connecticut Huskies were a 7 seed, they've won the NCAA tournament 4 times in the past 15 years.  Evidently they were also playing with a chip on their shoulder having being banned from the tournament in 2013.  I thought it was big of Shabazz Napier to make those comments in the post game interview, he stuck it to the idiots from the NCAA infractions committee.

Some random things coming out of this tournament.........

•  The SEC conference was awarded 3 bids for the tournament this year, Tennessee, Florida & Kentucky.  The committee must have selected the right teams because those 3 teams went a combined 12-3 in the tournament with almost a Florida / Kentucky final.  With all the conference changes of late, you really need a scorecard to determine who exactly is left in a conference like the SEC in basketball.  Not a big fan of all of this. 

•  For all your information, I start with downloading the rosters of teams expect to be in the tournament in January and February.  The next step is to download the stats for each team, after the regular season is completed, before post season conference tournament play.  There is usually only a handful of teams that make the tournament that we don't have regular season averages on because they won their respective post season tournament and were not expected to do so.

• We had 9 draft picks this year that were picked in the draft that were injured and not available in the games they were expected in the tournament.  Of course this will accumulate negative +/- points for the drafter but is this something you really want, when it's draft night?   The largest individual player <-> points accumulated this year went to the Noffke team who selected Brandon Ashley of Arizona in the 3rd round, 31st overall pick.  Ashley went down with a season ending ankle injury in early February.  One could only imagine where the Noffke team would have finished by not taking Ashley in the 3rd round this year who ended up with a <46> +/- points.   Noffke team finished in 3rd only 33 points behind 2nd place.

• Upon checking all the scoring a few undrafted players popped up that would have really enhanced your finish in the draft.  Monte Morris (6.2 pts / game reg season) from Iowa State was not drafted.  He scored 40 points in 3 games played and would have finished in the top 50 scoring.   Alex Poythress (6 pts / game reg season) of Kentucky scored 35 pts over the 6 games they played. Stefan Nastick of Stanford also scored 35 points and Austin Nichols of Memphis, their 4th leading scorer this year was not drafted.  He scored 24 in 2 games played.

All of the scoring has been rechecked and I only found 2 small 2 point corrections.. 

Final results: