Oh wait, that’s a reference to The Wizard Of Oz and not Cinderella. But since 8-seed Butler is still in the tournament, I feel like we need a new theme. The “brick” analogy might be appropos, as VCU went cold from their field before falling to the Bulldogs, 70-62.

Virginia Commonwealth, one of the last teams awarded an at-large berth in this year’s NCAA tournament, came up just short of an unprecedented national title game appearance. The 12-seed Rams lost to Butler in the national semifinal Saturday, ending one of the more surprising runs in recent tournament history.

“Some of our shots didn’t fall. Open shots, shots we’d been making,” [point guard Joey] Rodriguez said. “I think if you go back and look at the tape, you’ll see some of them were in and outs. Almost felt like it wasn’t supposed to happen or something.”

–Y! Sports.

VCU would have been the first school to emerge from a play-in game to the national title; while Butler, the Indianapolis school with an enrollment of less than 4,000, finds itself back in the national title game after losing its best player from last year.

Butler will face UConn in the championship; the Huskies ran the table in the Big East tournament to secure an automatic bid in the field of 68. UConn held to Kentucky to 33 percent shooting but only edged out a 56-55 win.

Oh, and I guess Maya Moore is out of the women’s tournament, whoever that is.

KENTUCKY — The year is 2011 and the ‘Cats are raw; in the rearview mirror is the motherf**king law. He’s got two choices, y’all: pull over the car, or bounce on the devil and put the pedal to the floor. But rappist Jay-Z isn’t trying to see a highway chase, and he’s got a few dollars with which he can fight the case. So he pulls over to the side of the road and hears, “Son, do you know why I’m stopping you for?” Because he’s young and he’s black and his hat’s real low? Is he under arrest or should we guess some more?

An NBA spokesman confirms that the league is investigating Jay-Z’s presence in Kentucky’s locker room after the Wildcats clinched a Final Four berth.

The rapper visited the players after their victory over North Carolina on Sunday at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J, home of the Nets. Jay-Z is a part-owner of the team and attended the Nets’ 120-116 loss at New York on Wednesday.

This would be an NBA rule violation, as the league prohibits team personnel from having contact with players who aren’t draft eligible. Spokesman Tim Frank told the Associated Press the league is looking into it.

In a statement released earlier today, Jay said that he’s “tried to ignore [it] and talk to the Lord, pray for them, ’cause some fools just love to perform [investigations].” He then began to laugh and gesture wildly, suggesting that producer Rick Rubin would be “crazy” when he hears about this.

[Associated Press]

"Let's name jspearlman the ambassador to Libya."

ESPN reported last night that just two of the 5.9 million submitted Tournament Challenge brackets predicted the Final Four correctly. That’s roughly two more than I would have ever imagined picking Butler and Virginia Commonwealth to make the Final Four, but nevertheless I tip my cap to those two evil geniuses. After all, it takes real balls to put an 8- and 11-seed in your bracket’s Final Four, especially on the same side.

One of the two perfect Final Four entrants, “jspearlman”, is in first place, while the other isn’t even close (6,343rd place). But the man currently on top of the World Wide Leader’s $10,000 mountain isn’t in the clear just yet. He chose VCU to win it all, but the entrant only 50 points behind him, “dawgpound513”, still has 3 Final Four teams alive and Kentucky winning it all. And the person in third place has 3 teams remaining and UConn winning it all. And none of us really care that much because we lost weeks ago.

How about your “celebrities”, ESPN?

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Three days after being named the consensus No. 1 team in America, the Kentucky Wildcats lost their very next game. Kentucky and their very young squad headed to Columbia, SC, where they were met with hostile aggression and exuberant defense. One might have thought that John Calipari had just written a disparaging blog post about Haiti. The Wildcats also were met by Devan Downey, whose 30 points help push the South Carolina Gamecocks over the newest No. 1, 68-62.

“This is what happens when you have young guys who think we’re are going to win at the last minutes of the game,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said.

“Those guys are very talented,” Downey said of the Wildcats. “But they’re also freshmen and this was a hostile environment.” –Y! Sports.

It was Downey’s fourth 30-point game in his last six outings. Also, Michigan State barely beat Michigan, and Kansas State did same with Baylor. We’re still about five weeks from the redundant conference tournaments, so let’s just come back to college basketball then, or until someone gets arrested. Cool? Cool.

Kentucky freshman John Wall is already making a case to be college basketball’s player of the year. Wall’s 25 points and dynamic end-to-end play helped Kentucky get past UConn last night at Madison Square Garden, 64-61.

“He’s phenomenal, one of the best players out there,” Kentucky forward Patrick Patterson said. “If we need a crunch-time basket we give it to John and we know we are going to have the advantage. Pretty much when we need baskets we know who to get the ball to.”[..]

“I just try to be a point guard,” Wall said. “I struggled some in the first half then picked it up in the second and led us to the victory.” –Y! Sports.

Despite being in early foul trouble, Wall did the majority of the ball handing for the Wildcats and controlled the pace for most of the game. It’s bizarre that a freshman can step into the college game and have that sort of impact. I blame Congress for that.

Here’s summer league video of Jerry Stackhouse (in white) getting “LeBron’d” by some dude named John Wall at some tournament called the N.C. Pro-Am, and I’m having a hard time figuring out which dude is the pro and which is the am. Stackhouse, who started all of one game for the Mavericks last year, just got served by an incoming college freshman.. Wall will be playing at Kentucky this winter, probably helping new coach John Calipari restoring that program to national prominence and then doing whatever dudes do in Kentucky, like hunting, fishing and voting Republican. via.