Final Four Weekend Notes!

Friday, April 03, 2009
By Jim Feist

Hurry up, let the games begin! The final stretch of the college basketball season is intense, with upsets, rivalries, memorable finishes, and the cream rising to the top. north Carolina is the only No. 1 seed still left standing, with 6-9, 250-pound Tyler Hansbrough, last year's College Player of the Year. He has averaged 20.9 points, just shy of his 22.6 average last season. He is grabbing two fewer rebounds (8.1) and shooting slightly worse from the field (52.1 percent), but he's at 85.8 percent from the line. As a senior, this is his last weekend of college ball.

The Tar Heels have four players - forward Tyler Hansbrough, swingman Danny Green, and guards Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington - who passed up entry into last year's NBA draft in order to come back and try to win a national championship. Those four all average double figures, and Lawson shoots a remarkable 48.5 percent on his three-point attempts.

Standing in their way will be Villanova. Most teams try and slow down North Carolina, but Villanova also plays an uptempo style. They averaged 79.5 points, while giving up 73.2 points, which ranked them 11th in the league in scoring defense. The Wildcats will try to win their second college basketball national championship, in front of an NCAA Final Four record of 72,000 fans in Detroit's downtown Ford Field. Villanova advanced to the Sweet 16 a year ago, but the Wildcats lost to eventual champion Kansas in the regional semifinal.

In the three games played in Ford Field last year, the teams averaged 60.7 points per game, well below their averages. Is is a defensive arena? Do the lights make it difficult to shoot? More likely, the games are intense this late in the campaign, which means more emphasis on defense.

In the Final Four, it has been the day of the dog the last six years. The underdog is 8-3 against the number, with seven dogs winning straight up. In addition, the games have gone 7-5 "over" the total, although the "under" is 3-1 the last two years. You can even make an argument that this would be the right time of the college hoops' season to take a shot with the dog on the money-line. However, this is where one needs patience, because trends can also be a fool's paradise. The last three years the favorites are 4-2 ATS. So if you had used that dog strategy the last two years you would have gone 2-4.

Michigan State catches a bit of a break as the tourney is being held in Detroit at Ford Field. Unlike Villanova and UNC, the Spartans got here by slowing the pace down and playing great defense, on a 2-0 run under the total. They knocked off mighty Louisville the last game, 64-52 as a +7 dog. That's what great defense can do for you.

For the record, going back the last 13 years, there have been 15 "unders" and 11 "overs" in the Final Four, with 14 dogs covering while 12 favorites have gotten the money. Again, trends are worth examining, but there has to be reasons behind them if you're serious about putting down hard earned money on a side. Perhaps the most significant stat that stands out is that 11 of the 14 dogs that covered ended up winning the game outright, which shows how competitive and relatively evenly matched the games become when teams get this far in the season. Final Four weekend, bring it on!