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.

"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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Poor, poor Duke. I feel just awful. And yet relieved that I got the Duke Sucks video posted before they were ousted.

But while we dance gleefully on Duke's grave, how 'bout that Eric Maynor? Dude took over the game in the final minutes, looking like a young Stephon Marbury back when Starbury was a name that mattered. And how about this: as the Fanhaus's Nathan Fowler pointed out, Maynor grew up (and still is) a HUGE North Carolina fan. That's gotta be delicious.

In other NCAA news, I'm pleased to report on Xavier's nail-biting win over BYU. Take that, Mormons. That's what you get for treating your fellow man with respect and spreading the word of God while helping impoverished nations. Jerks.

For all the rest of March Madness, I direct you to Sportsline's bracket. I've made the switch from ESPN… and it feels good.