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An odd sense of disappointment
I watched the Finals of March Madness tonight, the big Florida-Ohio State game. Of course, the main storylines were 1) that Florida had a chance to repeat as National Champions in basketball and 2) that Florida and OSU also played one another for the national championship in football this school year. Being from Ohio, I was really hoping that the boys of the hardwood could avenge the boys of the gridiron, but alas, it was not to be.
Florida, of course, was heavily favored, with all of the team's starters from last year's national championship team returning--but then, Ohio State was similarly favored in football and got completely destroyed. I can't really count myself among them, but I'm sure for the die-hard Ohio State fans this loss has got to sting, to be blown out by Florida twice in one year in national championship appearances. That's got to sting, right?
Here's the thing that's odd, when you stop and think about it: there are over 100 other Division I college teams that would have loved to have had the opportunity to lose to Florida in one national championship game, much less two. Think about it. Yes, all credit due to Florida for actually winning two national championships in one school year, but being runner-up in two national championship games is pretty impressive too. I guess I'm just a half-full kind of guy.
Now, that said, here's a downer from Ohio State's perspective: if the team's 3-point shooting had been a lousy 33%, they would have been ahead of Florida with under a minute to go. Instead, they were a ridiculously-low 3 of 21 at that point, while Florida really seemed like they couldn't miss from behind the arc. Thirty-three percent, that's all it would have taken. Sad. Or, consider how OSU failed to rebound on the offensive side--if someone down low had rebounded and scored on just one third of those missed 3-pointers (I can't say with confidence that they didn't rebound any, but it was pretty close to zero if it wasn't zero), that also would have been enough to put them over the top.