Rastall Ramblings: Stacked Final Four provides missing March Madness thrills

Through the first two weekends of the 2025 NCAA Tournament, it sort of felt like March Madness had been replaced by March Midness.

Sure, there were still some memorable moments, upsets and performances: McNeese took down Clemson for the obligatory 12-5 upset; No. 11 seed Drake knocked off Missouri with a team stacked with former Division II talent; John Calipari and Arkansas beat Rick Pitino and St. John’s in a game worthy of the hype; Derik Queen sent Maryland to the Sweet 16 with a buzzer beater to get past Colorado State; and Texas Tech rallied to beat Arkansas in OT in a Sweet 16 classic, then fell victim to a comeback by Florida in the Elite Eight.

There were also other entertaining games mixed in each round. The beauty of the NCAA Tournament’s format is it’s essentially impossible to have a total dud. But when the most notable Cinderella run came courtesy of an SEC team coached by Calipari, one of the 12-5 “upsets” was Colorado State beating Memphis in a game where the Rams were favored, and you get a Final Four consisting of four No. 1 seeds for just the second time ever — well you know you’re not getting the usual March Madness experience.

The hope was that the ongoing narrative throughout the men’s college basketball season that this was an extremely top-heavy year — one supported by efficiency metrics like KenPom and Bart Torvik’s T-Rank — would lead to a phenomenal Final Four.

Those who championed that idea were proven extremely correct, as we got one of the best Final Fours of all-time in San Antonio.

Florida-Auburn gave us the first meeting between SEC teams in Final Four history — a fitting matchup given the historic dominance of the SEC this season. In a game featuring a lot of excellent back-and-forth action where the Tigers led eight at halftime, it was the Gators who rode a 34-point performance by Walter “Diet Steph Curry” Clayton Jr. to a 79-73 win.

That entertaining game wound up being a mere appetizer for the Duke-Houston nightcap that gave us one of the most remarkable comebacks in Final Four history.

The Blue Devils were up by 14 with a little over eight minutes to go and led by six with 35 seconds left. Cooper Flagg looked like every bit of the national player of the year and fellow freshman sensation Kon Knueppel was solid as well. And yet, Houston held Duke to one made field goal in the final 10 minutes and ripped off a 9-0 run in the final 35 seconds to pull off a stunner for the ages in a 70-67 win.

Turnabout was fair play for the Cougars in the national championship game, as Houston led for nearly the entire way but faltered late in a loss to Florida.

The Gators led for a grand total of 64 seconds in the national title game and were down by as much as 12 in the second half but stormed back to win the third national title in program history thanks to a 65-63 victory.

Clayton Jr. was held scoreless in the first half before scoring 11 points over the final 20 minutes and making a phenomenal defensive stop on Houston’s Emanuel Sharp in the dying seconds to preserve the championship.

Frankly, I think seeing Kelvin Sampson finally getting his crowning moment by becoming the oldest coach to win a national title and Houston nabbing the first championship in program history would’ve been the more exciting finale than alleged cyberstalker Todd Golden’s Gators cutting down the nets. But Florida was certainly a worthy champion, and it was a fitting end for a Gators team that trailed in the second half in four of their six tournament wins.

The college basketball offseason is here, which means trying to keep up with the whirlwind nature of the transfer portal and enduring debates such as whether the NIL/transfer portal era is ruining the March Madness we’re all used to (or if this year was a just an aberration) and whether Florida and UConn deserve blue blood status.

But after a so-so first couple weeks of the NCAA Tournament, at least we got to send the 2024-25 men’s college basketball season out on a high note with a Final Four that more than lived up to its billing.