Big Dance: Kansas, Villanova Make It a Big Day for Chalk

Virtually every master braketeer advises to pick your upsets in the early rounds.

They're not keen on picking very many of them.

That goes double for the NCAA basketball tourney's later rounds.

For good reason. Even in a year when parity was reflected in bracket chaos, picking top seeds to meet at the Final Four is odds-on.

 

Didn't need to.

Both top seeds took care of biz and booked their tickets to San Antonio.

Villanova just kept slicing and dicing the Texas Tech defense as well as dominating the o-boards to build up a 36-23 halftime lead and spent the second half maintaining that cushion to post a 71-59 victory:

 

Interesting that a trey showed up in that clip. 'Nova was only 4-24 from the arc, but the Red Raiders weren't much better. They managed only a meager 5-20 on the day.

Both should've treated the arc as if it didn't exist.

 

Kansas and Duke didn't exactly singe twine from the outer regions, either, but the Jayhawks made quantity count:

• Bill Self's crew went 13-36 for a so-so 36.1%; which outnumbered
• The Blue Devils going only 7-29 for an borderline-atrocious 24.1%.

That disparity mattered, as Kansas needed overtime to prevail by four, 85-81:

 

If anyone's got a thought on what the Dookies were thinking on offense, please dial 1-800-WHAT-THE-HELL.

Rumor had it Marvin Bagley III hadn't gone pro yet.

Dude had the best view in the house, watching Grayson Allen fire blanks -- 3-13 -- and getting dizzy tracking that last second shot in regulation that damn near scraped all the paint off the rim.

 

Considering where the Jayhawks were compared to the Blue Devils at the turn of the year, this may have been Self's best season ever.

Of course, the Final Four awaits before anything's anointed, and they've gotta deal with another odds-on No 1 first.