King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Elegy for an underdog: Thanks, George Mason, we needed that. Plus: UCLA-Florida final. And: Women's semis, soggy baseball.

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April 3, 2006 | UCLA and Florida have their work cut out for them. They need to make Monday night's NCAA Championship Game exciting or one of the best Tournaments ever will end with a whimper.

As good as the first four rounds were, that's how bad Saturday's semifinal games were, unless you're a fan of UCLA or Florida.

Florida had little trouble ending the Cinderella run of George Mason, whose magic seemed to run out. It wasn't so much that the Patriots finally met their match, finally found a team good enough to beat them. They just played a lousy game against a good team that played well.

And that was the case in spades in the nightcap, when UCLA pounded LSU. What looked like it should have been a fairly even match was almost never in doubt. UCLA played about as well as a team can play. LSU would just as soon forget the night ever happened.

Let's stop and consider George Mason for a second. CBS's cameras caught head coach Jim Larranaga talking to his disconsolate team after the 73-58 loss to the Gators, telling them to appreciate the "magic carpet ride" they'd been on.

I don't think George Mason got to the Final Four with magic and sorcery and incantation. But there was the definite feeling Saturday that a spell had been broken.

On the game's very first play, Jai Lewis got the ball underneath and had his layup blocked by Joakim Noah. George Mason ended up scoring on the possession, but that block was an omen. That wasn't the kind of thing that had been happening in the wins over Michigan Sate, Wichita State, North Carolina and Connecticut. Plays that looked like they would lead to easy buckets had led to easy buckets.

This just wasn't the Patriots' night. But there hadn't been any charms or amulets, love philters or voodoo powders, shrunken skulls, soggy old tea leaves, crystal balls or magic wands in those wins, if I may borrow a list from Red Smith. Just good basketball and flawed, beatable opponents.

But when it ended it ended with a thud, as though someone had taken the spell off. Too bad because George Mason was really something.

Fifteen years ago, when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson for the heavyweight championship, I wrote that if we could imagine that 42-1 shot beating the unbeatable champ, we could imagine almost anything -- even world peace.

I was kidding, mostly. I was also in my 20s and living in Berkeley, so I wasn't kidding entirely. But I still think there's something to it. Great runs by underdogs are beautiful things. They really are, to use a word used way too often by people who do what I do for a living, inspirational.

Next page: The world needs great underdogs. Plus: Women's semifinals. And: Soggy baseball opener