Read the opposing arguments from Loyal Homer and Sports Geek.
Duke and Michigan State have made the Final Four… yawn!
In no way are my comments intended to diminish the impressive accomplishment that both schools have made. But let’s be honest – it is nothing new. And in this March Madness tournament, where the unprecedented has become the only precedent, there just is not any room on my wish list for programs and coaches who visit the Final Four with the same seeming regularity as my weekly trips to the grocery store.
Their counterparts, however, in the collection of 2010 NCAA Tournament Regional Champions are about to experience something altogether new.
It has been more than 50 years since the West Virginia Mountaineers last reached the Final Four with a shot to compete for the national championship, and 2010 marks the first time since the Calvin Coolidge administration that the Butler Bulldogs are in consideration for the nation’s top basketball prize. In this tournament of firsts, it only seems fitting that the championship matchup should pit two teams against each other that are competing for their first ever tournament title.
More important is the fact that both West Virginia and Butler are more deserving of the crown than Duke and Michigan State.
To begin with, neither of these teams should be a surprise as Final Four participants. Although Butler is coming out of the mid-major Horizon League Conference, they are the owners of the longest active winning streak in the country with their last loss coming at the hands of UAB BEFORE Christmas last year! Throughout the season they faced off against (and defeated) some of the top teams in the country, including victories over Ohio State and Xavier, both of whom were Sweet Sixteen teams.
As for West Virginia, the Mountaineers simply have too much talent on the floor to be stopped. In a year where much of the talent within the “usual” Big East powerhouses would be lacking (I TOLD YOU SO!), the combination of Da’Sean Butler, Devin Ebanks, and Joe Mazzulla was more than enough to carry the Big East banner deep into the 2010 tournament. Behind their seemingly re-invented head coach, Bob Huggins, this Mountaineers team has played like a team of destiny all season long.
Next, when comparing the tournament roads that each of the respective regional champions took to get to the Final Four, Butler and West Virginia have clearly faced off against the tougher competition, and both have survived intact. Butler had to take on and defeat both of the top two teams within their region (Syracuse and Kansas State) in order to continue the nation’s longest active win-streak. West Virginia was handed the task of beating the Kentucky Wildcats, a team which led the rankings as the nation’s top program for much of the 2009-2010 season (at least when Kansas wasn’t).
Compare that to Duke, who coasted into the Final Four as the beneficiaries of the weakest regional draw in the tournament, or to Michigan State, who played lesser-ranked teams in both of their Sweet Sixteen (against ninth-seeded Northern Iowa) and Elite Eight (versus sixth-seeded Tennessee) matchups.
While Butler and West Virginia were busy taking care of the so-called best teams in the country, Duke and Michigan State simply sat back and let other teams do all the hard work, while they just cleaned up the scraps.
Butler and West Virginia have already proven to be the best two teams remaining in the tournament, because they have both BEATEN the teams previously recognized as the best in the tournament. A championship game featuring these two teams would provide one of the most entertaining and dramatic tournament finals in memory.
If we have learned anything from the 2010 March Madness tournament, it is that the “establishment” needs to be shaken up a little bit. What was once considered gospel in the world of college basketball can no longer be counted on. The tried and true principles that we have assigned to the game of college hoops for years no longer seems viable, and we are now forced with redefining our criteria for recognizing the top teams in the country. It is time to see some new faces on top of the heap, and what better way to cap off this season of revolution than with a Butler-West Virginia national championship?.
Posted by Bleacher Fan 
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