Week before Final Four can be overwhelming

Everything changed that Monday. George Mason’s basketball team had just advanced to the 2006 Final Four, as a No. 11 seed that many observers thought shouldn’t have made the NCAA tournament in the first place. But now, after the Patriots beat top-seeded Connecticut in the Elite Eight, they were college …

VCU Nation: Campus news

With a historic upset of top-seeded Kansas and a Final Four berth in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament under the school’s collective belt, Virginia Commonwealth University students have adopted downtown Richmond restaurants and bars as their official cheering sections.

Photos – Final Four Welcome Home at Siegel

Students and fans gathered Sunday evening at the Siegel Center to welcome the Rams back home after defeating Kansas and claiming the NCAA Southwestern Regional Championship. Big thanks to Jeff Horne for sharing these photos. Check him out on Flickr . [Show as slideshow]

VCU notebook: ESPN’s Vitale changes his tune

Even Dick Vitale is picking the Rams to beat Butler. The ESPN analyst, along with Jay Bilas, was among the most vocal critics of the NCAA selection committee’s decision to give VCU an at-large bid.

CAA Full Court Press: 3/28/11

There’s still CAA basketball being played, and we’re still talking about it. Darren, Andy and Victoria broke down the VCU vs. Kansas game in this week’s show, after discussing the power of the CAA, VCU’s run, and the man named Shaka. Download audio file (032811.mp3)

Which team do you think will win the national championship?

Virginia Commonwealth University meets Butler University this Saturday, and the University of Connecticut meets the University of Kentucky later in the evening. The winner of both games will play on Sunday for the NCAA National Championship. Which team will be the national champs? More information: VCU Nation – Complete coverage …

Sights of San Antonio…

The national columnists are abuzz over VCU and the CAA. They are furiously churning out extremely high quality perspective and I’ve enjoyed most of them. And I mean that–there are some tremendous writers learning what we’ve known for awhile now. I’ve particularly enjoyed watching them discover the CAA and weave that discovery into words. But they didn’t see everything. Here’s a handful of things I saw. Some you know, some you don’t. All are great reminders of an unforgettable trip to San Antonio: VCU assistant Will Wade elbowed fellow assistant Mike Jones during a gripping sequence of the Kansas game, splitting Jones’s tooth in half. Jones arrived back on the team bus with a snaggly grin. Where’s the tooth? “Somewhere on the Alamodome floor.” Note: Wade will not be suspended by the CAA for flagrant action under the CAAs Sportsmanship Rule. Jamie Skeen climbed just two steps up on the ladder and reached up as far as he possibly could to take his snip of the net, complete with two teammates holding the ladder, because Skeen—the goofball of all goofballs—is deathly afraid of heights. Shaka Smart received a congratulatory text from LeBron James. Smart worked with Akron coach Keith Dambrot, who coached LeBron in high school. Heath Houston’s Knock ‘Em Out dance, but this time instead of breaking down the tomahawk chop, he catches and eats a jayhawk bird. Or Brandon Rozzell being coaxed from his locker to cook a little, or “make the pizza.” Shaka Smart, talking about his technical foul saying: “I kind of lost it a little bit, disagreeing with a couple of calls. I didn’t even say anything, but I guess I charged out there and ran a little bit faster than I should have….I’ve got to control my pace as I move toward the officials.” You saw this, but giving Kansas the first six points of the game, easy, and going on a 36-13 run…leading Kansas for 34 straight minutes, dominating the game. Skeen explained the main motto of VCUs three point prowess: “we say hand down, man down.” If you don’t close out a shooter with a hand in your face, they will shoot. Ed Nixon, in the fray of the postgame celebration, walking towards the stage saying “man I’m tired, I’ve got to sit down.” Shaka Smart telling his team: “We’re hard on you but you delivered. Every one of you delivered.” One of the Morris twins told Joey Rodriguez pregame that VCU has had a good run but it’s time to go home. How’d that work out? Brad Burgess to assistant coach Mike Rhoades’s son: “You ever been to Houston before? Me neither.” Retro nugget: #3Bids4CAA, mocked by many as not being rooted in reality, proved the power of believe and what can be. VCU had to postpone its men’s basketball banquet, originally scheduled for March 29, because it made the Final Four. VCU met every Kansas punch with a counter punch, and then Joey Rodriguez and Jamie Skeen delivered knockout blows. VCU controlled 35 minutes of that game. This was no fluke. Jamie Skeen, in a college basketball press conference first, used the word “buttholes.” Brandon Rozzell, thanked a reporter for wishing him happy birthday, using sir. He tipped his cap when the left the dais. The Mayor of Richmond indeed. *** I watched Bill Self watch Shaka Smart, championship net draped around Smart’s neck, walking down the ramp to get on the team bus. The blank look on Self’s face was somewhere between what could’ve been and how did I lose.

This is for the ones who stood their ground

Long before we ever got to the doorstep of #8Wins4CAA, there was the seemingly Quixotic hashtag that turned into reality and made all of this—VCU’s incredible, historic, orgasm-is-an-anagram-for-GORAMS run from the First Four to the Final Four—possible. And so, as we congratulate VCU and Rams fans on unprecedented achievement and direct you to those who can do this story justice— Mike Litos and Kyle Whelliston —we also pay homage to those who stood their ground and will enjoy this as much as anyone outside of RamNation, beginning with the ones who treaded what had to be the loneliest patch of grass in the yard. Our good friends and William & Mary alums @Gheorghetheblog and @batogato were the ones who started the #3Bids4CAA movement on Twitter back before Valentine’s Day and they, along with Litos, kept the faith even as the odds and hope seemed to dwindle. It was Litos who on Selection Sunday—15 days that feel as if they happened 15 years ago—channeled Tug McGraw (Google him, kids!) and implored us to believe in the two percent . We thought they were crazy. Turned out they were prescient geniuses. Enjoy this, gents, you believed before, and with more fervor than, anyone else. This VCU run is also for those of us who displayed a different fervor five years ago, for the Hofstra fans who pushed away the spoon and refused to swallow the feel-good Cinderella story being spewed by a nation that didn’t know the truth, didn’t know what we knew about THEIR run and HIS way. Most people—especially THEIR fans—wondered how we could derive nothing but sickness and heartache out of THAT run, how we could let our contempt and, yes, hatred consume us during the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to root for a school in the same conference as Hofstra—Hofstra, for crying out loud, a school just 12 years removed from winning the championship in a conference that didn’t have an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament—to reach the Final Four. Once-in-a-lifetime or not, how we felt and reacted in 2006 was the right thing—the only thing—to do. This—a seemingly twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity, emphasis on seemingly—is a reward for us, a second chance nobody ever expected to get. If they didn’t understand why we felt how we felt five years ago, then they’ll never understand the sense of peace that came over all of us yesterday afternoon, of seeing a team whose Final Four run wasn’t hatched via felonious acts of assault and underhanded backroom politics and whose coach delivers inspirational speeches that sound authentic, heartfelt and spontaneous and not hackneyed and scripted for television. 2006 is a footnote now—one that will always gnaw at us, to be sure, but one we no longer have to hear parroted every goddamn March by people who don’t know any better. We are free. Now and forever, the Cinderella standard is five wins over five BCS league opponents to get to the Final Four. Now and forever, we are searching for—and hoping to become—the next VCU. This VCU run is for those who cover entire leagues and an entire genre (for lack of a better word) of basketball in the type of comprehensive and outstanding fashion they deserve, and not as the niche the gatekeepers wish it was. Once again, this is for you, Mike Litos, a man I am proud to call my friend and someone who inspires me everyday to be a better writer and person, and for you, Kyle Whelliston, so accurately dubbed the bard of the mid-majors. Of all the Tweets generated by VCU’s stunning upset yesterday, my very favorite was from Northwestern State broadcaster Patrick Netherton : “Funny that this season, with all ESPN’s experts, the guy most knowledgeable about half the Final Four teams is @midmajority, who they fired.” Whelliston was fired for daring to suggest “The Sports Bubble” that was created by ESPN is unsustainable. The mainstream kicked him out, and not coincidentally, has deemed the CAA a conference unworthy of big-time coverage or a seat at the big boy table. So Litos and Whelliston ran an end-around and made their own breaks, and this weekend, they will be covering VCU in the Final Four. Most of all, this VCU run is for all those who stood our ground and refused to believe the notion that the mid-major basketball we love is somehow lesser than power conference ball. It’s for those whose world views are shaped not by what ESPN tells us is REALLY IMPORTANT but by heading out to smaller arenas and gymnasiums and seeking out those of our ilk on what must be the best community on the Internet. It is a place where a Hofstra fan and a Mason fan can tell each other to go fudge a kite, and then come to appreciate and respect the other’s passion for his alma mater, all in a single day. It is a place in which everyone went to bed last night (or this morning) dreaming of the day their team is the one tugging at uniform tops after knocking out Drago. The odds are long—very long. But three mid-majors have made the Final Four in the last five years. As Final Four-bound VCU coach Shaka Smart might say: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.” Yes there is. The last song I heard before I got out of the car last night was the Rocky IV anthem—and Hofstra Arena staple— “No Easy Way Out.” That’s a good enough sign for me. We can be the next VCU. The hashtag is #HUF4. Pass it on. Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch .

VCU heads to Final Four after stunning No. 1 Kansas, 71-61

By Paul J. Weber SAN ANTONIO Move over, Butler. Virginia Commonwealth is crashing the Final Four. The 11th-seeded Rams, who didn’t even bother to watch the NCAA tournament selection show, are heading to Houston, and final No. 1 seed Kansas is heading home after a spectacular collapse.

POLL: VCU or George Mason?

Which mid-major program’s run to the Final Four was more improbable

« Previous Page — Next Page »