The Clearing

Saw the men's ncaa basketball final last night and was terribly disappointed. Firstly, Florida won in a blowout---I was inevitably rooting for the underdog, UCLA, and boy did they prove their pre-game status right. A reason for rooting against Florida was the way they demolished George Mason, the team I was truly rooting for, in the semi-finals. Florida definitely deserved to win, they were the better team, and outplayed UCLA which didn't show up at all till, for a brief while, late in the second half. Secondly, with the officiating which I thought was below par for a final, my Greek-basketball-viewing-companion (I'm sure I'll remember his name once I see it in writing) and I must have counted atleast 4 traveling violations, amongst other missed calls, that were not called on Florida.

Thirdly, with Joakim Noah who was responsible for most of those traveling violations. Also because he is over-rated and a bully. He certainly has a lot energy and bustle which in no small way helped the Gators win, but his ball handling is quite clumsy at best, hence the walks. The funny thing is that, considering my interest in tennis, I would have suspected that the odds were that I would be supporting Noah, since he is the son of the Yannick Noah, the first black player to win the French Open (Poor logic, I realize, but you need some reason, however inane, to select, or not slect, a team to support when all seem the same---there's a related phenomena in Physics called spontaneous symmetry breaking). Initially, I was. I was intrigued by the big fellow in the earlier games but have now decided to dismiss him off as an over-hyped arrogant ass. On the other hand, was excited to read in an interview of his to the nytimes the other day that he didn't like Crash, the `motion picture of the year', either, and here I was thinking that Jeeves and I were the only ones who did not.

Labels: Sports