Bracket Buster Team: Is George Mason “America’s NCAA Team?”
Call it the NCAA Final Four that no one predicted. It’s pretty close to the truth.
Of the more than 3 million people who entered ESPN.com’s March Madness competition, only four correctly forecast the Final Four combination of UCLA, LSU, Florida and George Mason. GMU was the team that gave people the most trouble. Just 1,854 people picked the 11th-seeded Patriots, out of th
e lowly Colonial Athletic Association, to make the Final Four.
The commuter school in Fairfax, Va., with an enrollment of 17,000 undergraduates had never even won an NCAA game until this year. The Patriots’ exciting tournament run in which they knocked off former national champs North Carolina, Michigan State and UConn has become one of the most-talked about stories on sports radio.
While ratings for the tournament are down from last year, when popular North Carolina won the tournament, they are well up over 2004 and the second-best since 1999. Sunday’s game between UConn and GMU averaged a 6.0 household rating, up 15 percent from the same game in 2004. But will George Mason continue to generate decent ratings?
CBS’s Jim Nantz calls George Mason "America’s team" and says the 11th-seeded Patriots (27-7), who play Florida (31-6) on Saturday in the Final Four, have changed the landscape in college basketball forever. George Mason, located just south of Washington in Fairfax County, Va., and a member of the Colonial Athletic Association, is the first mid-major to reach the Final Four since Indiana State in 1979.
Hoosiers. Super Bowl III. The Miracle on Ice. Two more victories, and George Mason would become to college basketball what a basketball team from a small town in 1954 Indiana means to high school sports, what Joe Namath’s Jets are to pro football and what the 1980 U.S. ice hockey team is to the Winter Olympics.
Can George Mason complete a Hollywood ending? Hmmm, only Mr. George Mason knows…
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PREDICTION: Florida to destroy George Mason and set up a NCAA title game vs UCLA.
