Tonight's championship tilt

In my bracket I had Ohio State winning it all over Wisconsin (whom I had beating Florida in the final 8). My rationale for the Buckeyes was that this team of heralded freshmen would pull it together, overcome their stumbles and grow into champions along the way. Well, here they are in the Final, they've pulled it together and overcome some stumbles, but are they ready to be champions? They've already lost to these Gators once this year but Oden had only just begun and its not hard to imagine that the young squad got nerve-y in the presence of the defending champs. The Buckeyes beat North Carolina and matched up with Wisconsin a coupla times already this year, so they've played some competition.

I was skeptical of Florida because I felt like they skated most of the season. The SEC was deceptively weak (the mirror opposite of last year's football season where the SEC was deceptively strong), and their only really strong non-conference opponent, Ohio State, was such a blow-out it was indicative of nothing. Were they actually that much better than the Buckeyes? Has the weak SEC given Florida an inflated sense of self? So far they've only beaten two good but not great Pac-10 squads (Oregon, UCLA) and a scrappy, but wildly undermanned Butler. Ohio State will bring the small scrappy style of Butler with big men way better than UCLA. I think this Buckeye team will be the best team Florida plays all year.

Much has been made of Florida's attempt to be the first team to repeat since the Laettner-Hurley-Hill Duke team of the early '90's. But little mention has been made of Arkansas making back-to-back championships (losing the second time) or Kentucky's 3 straight Finals appearances (they won the first and the last but not the middle). So teams trying to win back-to-back have appeared and failed so far. I'm not sure what to think here. If the refs crack down on Horford and Noah (which as I recall was how Arkansas fell to UCLA back in the day), then Florida may find themselves in the foul trouble that doomed UCLA the other night. Ohio State, on the other hand, was able to overcome foul trouble to Oden and a poor shooting night by Lewis to get here. I think Ohio State plays better than they did on Saturday, I'm not sure Florida can play better.

Florida started as the 4 point fave, which has since grown to 5 today, with 140 as the point. I'm predicting an OT tonight, so I'll definitely take the over. And I'll take Florida to pull it out the win but they don't cover. Ohio State (+5) and the over (140), but Florida is your repeat champs. I have spoken so even though the game now is moot, try to enjoy it anyway.