The Final Four!

Unbelievable!!! That’s all I can say about the George Mason victory over UConn. 86-84 today! We could not be prouder of our team!

Mason won in overtime. They had us a little concerned when Connecticut came back to tie the game in the final two seconds, sending it into overtime. The game had us all sitting on the edge of our seats, but the Patriots made history today, making it into the final four! This truly is the most excited I think I have ever been about following sports. Three games in a row now, GMU has defied the odds and fought for hard-won victories over the best college basketball teams in the nation.

Here’s how the game progressed. Mason came from behind to hold neck-in-neck with top-ranked UConn and then pulled ahead to win the game:



The campus has been celebrating non-stop since the victory today. Cars honking all over patriot circle, everyone high-fiving one another, people shouting anytime they make eye contact with one another. I went to two big football schools for undergrad (Virginia Tech) and my masters degree (University of Florida). This is the first time I have seen this kind of school spirit here at GMU and it is AWESOME!!! It is hard not to catch the fever of excitement around here.

Everyone all over the press seems to agree (emphasis mine)…

From the Washington Post:

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The Patriots also became the first team to defeat the two previous national champions -- Connecticut and North Carolina -- en route to the tournament's final weekend. All of this would have been a stunning achievement for a basketball powerhouse, but it defied description for an undersized, overlooked squad from a school that had never won an NCAA tournament game until 10 days ago.

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Sports Illustrated had this to say:

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Nearly every person who watched the 11th-seeded Patriots' historic 86-84 win over top seed Connecticut here Sunday will remember a different moment when he or she realized the unbelievable was becoming entirely possible. Perhaps it was early in the second half when George Mason big man Jai Lewis kicked out to Lamar Butler for a 3-pointer to tie the score at 49-49, erasing a one-time 12-point Connecticut lead. Perhaps it was with 5:01 remaining in regulation, when, just as it appeared Huskies star Rudy Gay was about to singlehandedly lead his team to victory, Tony Skinn drained a 3-pointer to put the Patriots back up 69-65 and send the overwhelmingly green-and-yellow clad crowd into a frenzy.

Standing at the scorer's table watching the celebration unfold, Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, who has been associated with college athletics for more than four decades, hid any disappointment for his own league's team to marvel at the event he'd just witnessed.

"I don't know of anything I've seen that's more remarkable," he said. "It reminds me of the night Villanova beat Georgetown."

In the NCAA tournament annals, it will go down as an upset on par with any, that epic 1985 title game included. This one wasn't for the trophy, but it was for the Final Four. It was an 11 seed knocking off the top remaining seed in the bracket. It was a team that had never won a tourney game prior to this season knocking off one of the most successful tourney teams of the past 15 years.

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ESPN reports:

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…even if George Mason was a single-digit seed instead of a No. 11, that probably wouldn't matter for historical purposes. This was the greatest run ever to the Final Four. End of discussion.



It's hard to gauge what this historic win has done for this university located just 20 miles from here, one that is named after one of the founders of the U.S. Constitution, an idealist who refused to sign the document because he wanted the abolishment of slavery included (history lesson courtesy of head coach Jim Larranaga). Given that history, though, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the basketball team that bears George Mason's name would have plenty of passion.

The Patriots took out Tom Izzo, Roy Williams and Jim Calhoun, the latter a Hall of Fame member and the first two likely to be enshrined some day.

"I don't know if I've ever seen anything as remarkable," Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said as he watched Larranaga, his good friend, cut down the nets at the expense of his league's best team. "Connecticut played well but George Mason played out of [its] mind. It reminded me of the night Villanova beat Georgetown [in 1985 to win the national title]."

GMU held Michigan State scoreless for seven minutes in the first half. Against North Carolina, the Patriots held the Tar Heels to under 30 percent shooting. Combined, GMU outrebounded the two power brokers by an average of 39-32.

On Sunday, the Patriots came back from nine down at the half to outscore UConn 40-31 in the second half and then 12-10 in the overtime. They made 6-of-7 3s in the second half, while UConn was 1 of 8. They had balance, with five players in double figures. Lewis had 20 and Thomas and Butler had 19 each.

Just as impressive, though, was how the Patriots responded after Denham Brown converted a reverse layup that bounced on the rim three times before dropping at the regulation buzzer to send the game into overtime. The Huskies said after the game that they thought they would win it since they had received new life.

In the middle of the on-court celebration was school president Dr. Alan Merten. He has center-court seats for home games and is probably one of the team's biggest boosters. Merten acknowledged that while the university has had two Nobel Prize winners since 1986, the reality is that, at the presidential level, the Final Four can drive conversation.

"I'm going to be at a different table now," Merten said. "I walked by a room the other day that had 10 of our top biologists, some of the best in the world. I walk by and I hear one guy say, 'I was worried about the score at halftime [when Mason was down seven to North Carolina].' So, they weren't talking biology. What this means to us, we don't know yet. One thing it does mean is that we did it right. We did it right."

Check that: They did it right and made history along the way. But the story isn't over yet.

"I hope no one is counting us out because we could bring back the national championship to D.C.," Skinn said. "It's unbelievable, man. Never count a team out."

Especially not one named after George Mason, a principled Patriot who wasn't about to fold no matter the pressure of the time.

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Read more here, here, here and here.

View photo galleries from the game here and here.

The Washington Post has some great in-depth coverage of the Patriots.

Professor Pete Boettke shares his thoughts about the team.

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In other news, my alma mater, University of Florida also won today! This has been possibly the most exciting weekend of sports in my life as both the Patriots and the Gators won double victories. Four victories in 48 hours! Fantastic!!!

The Gators beat Villanova 75-62. As you can see, they pulled ahead early in the game and never lost their lead:



ESPN reports:

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Prior to the opener last November, none of the green Gators on Billy Donovan's roster had ever led the team in scoring in a single game. After supposedly being too young for a prominent position in the college basketball big picture, they are front and center in that picture today. They're steamrolling to the Final Four as the favorite to cut down the nets April 3.

Florida earns that distinction after reducing the Minneapolis Regional to Gator bait. The sophomore-led lizards blew out South Alabama and Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the opening rounds, survived Georgetown here Friday night and then dispatched the last No. 1 seed standing in this chaotic tournament, Villanova, with relative ease, 75-62. Nobody else -- not LSU, not UCLA, not Miracle Mason -- took the last step to Indianapolis with as much authority as the Gators.

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Read more here and here.

This means the Gators will play the Patriots this Saturday at 6:07 PM EST in Indianapolis. I am very excited about this game – my former alma mater playing my future alma mater.

I’ve had a lot of people asking me who I’ll be rooting for this game. It’s tough making a decision, but there’s no way I could root against the Patriots after the run they’ve had. The excitement around here is unbelievable and I am getting as caught up in it as anybody.

Seeing Florida do well in sports in almost routine. Seeing a team like Mason do well is almost unprecedented! I 100% hope the Patriots win next Saturday, but if there’s any team that would be the least painful to loose to in this tournament, it would be the Gators.

Good luck to both teams!