Saturday gave us the excitement of not one blown lead, but two. After a gritty bunch of sharpshooters from West Virginia finally succumbed to superior Louisville firepower, Arizona went them one better by managing to blow a fifteen-point lead in the final four minutes. I’m sure Lute Olsen made at least the suggestion to Salim Stoudamire that he might consider running a little time off the clock before jacking up a wild shot and can only assume that Salim chose not to listen. Then came Sunday. Our conference gained Final Four representation yet again as North Carolina held Wisconsin at arm’s length, producing a veritable rout by this year’s regional finals standards. Then came the weekend’s topper, the incredible Michigan State win over Kentucky, which managed to produce some of the greatest theatre since Shakespeare either did or did not write all of those masterpieces.

The ACC did indeed produce another Final Four team, although not the two that made it last year. It was Carolina’s turn to represent both the conference and Tobacco Road this year, as ‘Ol Roy continued his first-rate turnaround at Dean’s place with mostly the same cast of characters that flat-out refused to play another second for the fired Coach D’oh, otherwise known as Matt ‘Will Coach For Food’ Doherty. Matt was reduced to watching his players cutting down Syracuse nets while sitting in a studio at something called CSTV, whatever that is. His constant media shilling for another job seems to be falling mostly on deaf ears, as the number of schools desiring to hire the guy who took one of the most successful programs ever and ran it straight into the ground appears to be small. Even Hoo AD Craig Littlepage, still waiting for Tubby Smith to decide he is tired of winning so much, doesn’t seem to be interested in Matt.

The Tar Heels won their way into this weekend’s Final Four in Syracuse, of all places. One can only imagine the joy that must have been evident among the locals around the Carrier Dome. There was not one, but two ACC teams showing up for the weekend. I’m sure Carolina Chancellor James Moeser was the recipient of many slaps on the back from Orangepersons overjoyed at his expansion stance. It was unfortunate that Marye Anne Fox is no longer running NC State. No doubt the Syracuse faithful would have given her a long standing ovation.

There was, of course, basketball being played at Syracuse and the other three regional sites and not the first dribble of it was played by the Orange. Jim Boeheim’s top-flight program found itself unceremoniously bounced from the NCAA shindig by Vermont. Losing to a basketball team from the state with the abbreviated initials ‘VT’ provided some great humor in the Tournament. We will think about you in the years to come, Syracuse, as you toil away in the Li’l E, unless we do not.

As for Tech’s former conference, none of them will be around St. Louis this weekend. What a shame. There is bound to still be something in Morgantown left to burn. It will just have to wait until next year, I suppose. Our good friend Mike Tranghese can take solace from one of next year’s newbies to his supersized basketball potpourri making the Last Waltz of the Big Dance. Good old Louisville will be there. What a treat that will provide for Tech fans. My rooting interest will coincide with Bill Murray’s when the Cards take on Illinois.

Actually, my rooting interest will be with Bill’s for the entire Final Four, as I picked Illinois to win the whole shebang. A fat lot of good it will do me, however, as even if the Illini prevail over Carolina or Michigan State, I can’t catch HokieKev in our standings, since he showed startling originality by selecting the same Illinois. If Louisville can finally make another Final Four for the first time since we were both members of the Metro Conference, I suppose Kevin can finally finish something other than second in our various selecting contests. I am left to duke it out for positions with HokieJay, whose predictions of Duke and Wake to join Carolina and Illinois in the Final Four had exactly the same amount of success as my exact same choices. So much for conference loyalty. Our battle for Spring Game bragging rights [we finished tied for first last year, right down to the points in the championship game] will come down to his pick of Carolina to make the Final Two while, for reasons that escape me at the moment, I had chosen Duke to lose to Illinois. All of us pale in comparison, however, to the Final Four picks turned in by the guy who will be cooking for us at the Spring Tailgate. Clota Gerhardt’s Final Four selections of Nevada, Gonzaga, Florida and Kentucky will go down as one of the greatest examples of bracket selections in the history of the activity. They should be enshrined at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield. As a basketball prognosticator, Clota makes a fine tailgate chef.

Pool selection ineptitude aside, the drama produced by last weekend’s games made enduring all of those repetitive commercials worthwhile. Well, mostly.

Ah, the commercials. What would any sporting event be without them? CBS laid out $375 extra large to bring us the excitement, this year’s portion of the eleven-year, $6.1 billion deal it has with the NCAA for the men’s basketball extravaganza. That amount of coin makes an endless barrage of commercials a necessary evil. And there were some good ones.

The pilot lumbering down the plane and leaping out after a six-pack of beer continues to crack me up no matter how many times it is shown. Now there’s a beer lover. I also enjoy the soft drink commercial set on a street court. Let’s see Rashad McCants make a spin move while holding a bag of groceries. The only way that one could have been any better was if the WVU gunners had taken the bottles of the beverage and drilled them from twenty-five feet.

But there were others not quite so amusing. There were the credit card commercials. The least-objectionable was the one where I kept waiting for Coach K to exclaim, “That’s why my @#$%^ card is…” Maybe they saving that one for this weekend. Then there is the other one. I had thought that there would have been no possible advertising message that I would come to loathe as much as that cow jumping from the diving board, but I was wrong. My habit is to instinctively lunge for the remote whenever David Spade appears on the screen. I have managed to pick up bits and pieces of some recipes from the Food Network that sound pretty good.

My understanding of the usage of advertising is that a company’s message should persuade people to use the product or service offered, not cut a credit card into tiny pieces and mail them to Richmond with instructions to immediately cancel my account, along with further instructions on how and where to dispose of the tiny pieces of my former card. But then again, I don’t get asked to participate in too many focus groups.

We can likely count on new commercials to fill the time between fantastic finishes during next year’s festivities. I am sure some shoe company marketing whiz is hard at work on a new basketball shoe that will feature the toe curving inward so as to better lodge against the three-point line. Hopefully, David Spade won’t be hawking it.

There was also the not-so-unobtrusive habit of CBS to constantly shill its upcoming programs. It’s a wonder they didn’t take the time Sparks’ end-of-regulation shot was tantalizingly bouncing around the rim to slip in another promo for some program I’m not going to watch. ‘Elvis’ is not a program I plan on watching.