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Balls Blogs Sports

March Madness Championship Game Preview

John Berger
Senior Editor

And then there were two. After a six month college basketball season and a 68 team tournament, only Louisville and Michigan remain standing. On Saturday, Louisville came back from a 12 point deficit to defeat Wichita State, and Michigan led Syracuse for pretty much the entire last 30 minutes of the game, and ended up holding on to advance to the final. The first semifinal, Wichita State vs Louisville, was very interesting because it was really the first time in a while that Louisville has been tested. They trailed 47-35 in the second half, when Tim Henderson, a walk-on replacing the injured Kevin Ware, made two straight threes to cut the lead in half. It was a pretty cool moment, seeing Ware, sitting on the ground as a result of his broken leg, watching his replacement Henderson come in and make some big plays. Wichita State did a really good job on Louisville defensively for a large part of the game, but in the last ten minutes of the game, Louisville scored 27 points. Peyton Siva, Gorgui Dieng, and Wayne Blackshear, three of Louisville’s starters, combined to score 7 points. If that happens against Michigan, it will be nearly impossible for the Cardinals to win.

Balls Blogs Sports

March Madness predictions: Final Four

Last weekend’s NCAA tournament games offered a number of interesting story-lines, but obviously the thing that everybody was talking about was the injury of Louisville guard Kevin Ware. I’m not going to link to a video of it because it was extremely gruesome, and not something that I want to look at again. From a basketball perspective, Ware’s injury adds an interesting dynamic to this tournament, because Louisville seemed to really rally around his absence on Sunday, and for the final four, there will be an increased incentive for Louisville to win the championship in Ware’s hometown of Atlanta. Like many said at the beginning of March, this tourney was likely to be unpredictable, and it was. We’re now left with the #1 overall seed, two #4 seeds, and a nine seed. With all that said, here are my predictions for Saturday’s games.