Phenomenal Amounts of Overall Talent

Every team this year is bursting at the seams with NBA players.  It could be easily argued that as many as ten players from this Final Four will hear their names called in the first round of the NBA Draft about two and a half months from now.  While there are some who complain about the lack of a "Cinderella" team, if you're the type who just enjoys watching high quality basketball from the best possible competition, this is the tournament you've been waiting for.  Forget about the rest of the tournament and the fact that the last two rounds have had an inordinate amount of blowouts.  There are three games left, and they'll all be played by the four best teams in the country.  If you can't get excited about that, you'd be better off watching curling, where you can satisfy your desires to have no idea who anybody is or if they're actually any good at what they're doing.  Not since the Swedish Bikini team's tour bus broke down in San Antonio in 1967 has the Texas town hosted so much young talent.

Roy Williams Vs. Kansas

Even though the Jayhawks haven't exactly fallen off the map under Bill Self, rest assured there are still plenty of Kansas boosters who'd like to fight Roy Williams in some gondola high over the Swiss Alps.  He's a James Bond-level villain in Kansas, and the level of resentment will plunge to hellish new depths if the Tarheels can manage a victory Saturday night.  San Antonio is decidedly closer to Lawrence than to Chapel Hill, so couple that with the nationwide bitterness toward UNC's unending stream of amazing recruiting and on-court success and you could hear more than a little Roy bashing from the crowd.  I just hope they can come up with some clever ideas for signs, because I can't.

The Great Depth of North Carolina Vs. The Ridiculous Depth of Kansas

Were it not for an early season ACL tear to backup point guard Bobby Frasor, UNC's depth could also be considered certifiably ridiculous.  Still, UNC spreads its minutes pretty evenly over an eight man rotation, which includes one of the best sixth men in college basketball in Danny Green.  As will always be the case when a team relies as heavily on one player as the Heels rely on Tyler Hansbrough, though, questions will abound as to how effectively his loss could be offset.  Fortunately for UNC, the only part of Hansbrough that can be broken is his nose, and you don't need a nose to play basketball.

In the meantime, Kansas has no such superstar.  It could be argued fairly reasonably that Brandon Rush became that player over the second half of the season after coming back a little too early from a torn ACL suffered last spring, but Kansas won -- and won big -- even before Rush's reemergence.  They did it with one of the nation's sturdiest frontcourt rotations in Darnell Jackson, Darrell Arthur and Sasha Kaun.  Even their fourth big man, Cole Aldrich, is a former McDonald's All-American -- and you can likely look forward to seeing him contribute some fouls to the Hansbrough machine.  Kansas also brings spark plug Sherron Collins off the bench.  If this team were any deeper, it would officially be classified as poetry.

Kevin Love Vs. The Memphis Frontcourt 

Kevin Love entered the season viewed by most as a phenomenal high school basketball player whose incredible skill level and court sense wouldn't translate to the world of superior run-and-jump athletes that is the PAC-10 conference.  So, Kevin Love went out and averaged just under 18 points and 11 rebounds, wowed endless onlookers with his full court outlet passes, and was named a 1st Team All-American.  Then, he took the West Region of the tournament by storm, averaging 22 points, 11 rebounds and, most surprisingly for a guy considered as vertically challenged as Love, over 4 blocks per game.  The kid simply knows how to play the game.  If Larry Bird had been shorter and chunkier, he might have turned out a lot like Kevin Love.

He's coming up against his biggest test of the season in Memphis, who will certainly double team him if they need to, but will likely wait and see first.  They'll wait and see only because they have Joey Dorsey, the monstrously large and five-years-older-than-Love Ben Wallace clone who, legend has it, bench presses so much that when he pushes on the bar, the weight doesn't move up.  The Earth moves back.  If Dorsey can't handle the guile of Love, though, they could try to front him with the freakishly long-limbed Robert Dozier, or back-up center Shawn Taggart.  The Memphis frontcourt really has no end to the amount of options they can try to slow down Love, and, if history is any indicator, they'll be calling on most of them.

Derrick Rose Vs. The UCLA Backcourt

Just to underline the whole "quantity of talent" argument again, how crazy is it that Memphis has a 1st Team All-American starting at guard and it's not Derrick Rose, who could conceivably be the first overall pick in the June draft?  The UCLA guards, those being 3rd team All-American Darren Collison and PAC-10 Defensive player of the year Russell Westbrook -- and let's throw Josh Shipp in there, who'll likely draw the assignment of Chris Douglas-Roberts some of the time -- are going to be tasked with the job of slowing down the motor that has powered the Memphis attack these past few weeks.  Rose is fresh off the domination of the player many experts considered to be the best point guard in the nation in Texas sophomore D.J. Augustin, and he already has the unflappable demeanor of a superstar.  Watching him play, you can't help but be reminded of Dwyane Wade's 2003 tournament run, except that Wade was a junior that year, and Rose is just a freshman.  He's not likely to be intimidated in the slightest, and if he can get the starting backcourt of UCLA in foul trouble, their gameplan will likely fall apart.