Boston College faces the University of Wisconsin for the NCAA championship game Saturday, April 10th, at 4pm PT on ESPN.  This is a rematch of the Championship pairing just four years ago.  This should be (I know you’ve heard that one before) a great game between two teams that can both score like crazy, can both play fierce defense, and can win in either scenario.  Don’t miss this one!

Cinderella’s Slipper Turns out to be an Army Boot for R. I. T.

AND:    Miami of Ohio a No-Show in Nightcap Game

Wow!  What a positively dreadful outcome on what I had billed as one of the most fantastic sporting events on the planet.  Wisconsin and Boston College both put on brilliant hockey clinics in offensive firepower and defensive excellence.  For their parts, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Miami of Ohio, just didn’t show up.

Details?  Period by period scoring?  Shots on goal figures?  Forget it.  These were just massivley lopsided blowouts that were only fun to watch if you were a Wisconsin fan or a B.C. fan.  It started with the Wisconsin-RIT game.  What do you say about an 8-1 blowout?  Congratulations, Wisconsin.  That’s about it.  Next up, B.C.-Miami game; a 7-1 blowout.  Congratulations, B.C.

It is possible that there is something about the format of the tournament that makes it hard for a Cinderella, such as last year’s Bemidji State, or RIT this year, to pull it off.  They come out of nowhere (literally, Bemidji and Rochester?), and play brilliantly for two games in a two day period, fighting for their lives every second of each game.  They were never viewed as national championship material even on their own campuses, and the victims in the last two years (Denver, New Hampshire, Notre Dame, and Cornell), just get struck by lightning.  Between the games, they have nothing to think about at all, other than how to possibly survive the next game.  And it is repeated.  Then they go home . . . . ticker tape parades, hundreds of people waiting for them in airports that can only hold hundreds of people.  All of a sudden they are back home as the next possible national champions!  And they have ten days off.  Ten days to . . . . think?  I suspect that if they played the next day, instead of ten days later, things could come out differently for these exciting teams.  Bemidji was crushed in the semis last year, and now RIT

As regards Miami, they ended the season not so hot.  Denver ended not so hot and they lost to RIT.  Miami had a weak ending to their season (they won only four of their last eight games), and they struggled against Alabama-Huntsville and Michigan.  They were not ready and just were not in the game on Thursday, and they were playing a team that knows how to tournament like very few others.

That’s it for now.  Stay tuned, and go Terriers!