Tagged As: basketball, NBA, NCAA, Sports, North Carolina Tar Heels, Michigan State, college, Magic Johnson

While the Big East certainly proved it was the best conference in the land with five teams making it to the Elite Eight and two teams making it to the Final Four, the conference failed to put a single team in an NCAA Tournament championship. Instead, representatives from two of the most down-trodden major conferences of the year, the Michigan State Spartans from the Big Ten and the North Carolina Tar Heels from the ACC, are taking their place. This match up is a surprise, but it is hardly a big shocker.

The only surprise comes when looking at the match up from a purely conference point of view. The Big Ten may have gotten seven teams in March Madness, but only Michigan State was a top four seed. Schools like Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin were double-digit seeds. Purdue made a nice run, but failed to add a second Big Ten squad to the Sweet 16.

The ACC was given a mere three teams. The conference is used to being up there with the Big Ten, the Big 12, and the SEC for schools in the tournament. The ACC, along with the SEC had improbably down years. However, UNC was given a number one seed and Duke was awarded a number two seed, meaning that it was very likely that one of those two would make a serious play for the championship.

From a team point of view, this is a perfectly foreseeable game. The Tar Heels, a number one seed, are playing the Spartans, a number two seed. These are two teams that came into the tournament with high expectations from fans and the college basketball establishment (thus the seeds), and they have simply carried out those goals. These are not only seed appropriate teams, but teams whose names have become familiar utterances in the Final Four and the championship game.

The North Carolina Tar Heels have won the college basketball title four times. They won in 1957, 1982, 1993, and 2005. Those four wins are good enough to make them the fourth winning-est college basketball program since the inception of the NCAA Tournament in 1939. The team also is tied for the most Final Four appearances of all time with Duke with 18.

The Michigan State Spartans have become quite familiar with the Final Four since Tom Izzo took over as head coach in 1995. The school has been to the last two rounds of the tournament in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2005, and now 2009 under his direction.

Of course one of my favorite storylines of the tournament belongs to the Michigan Spartans. Not only was recent history on their side, but sports history made this game appropriate.

Throughout the tournament I have seen Magic Johnson in the stands wearing a green hoodie. Thirty years ago, he and Larry Bird officially began their rivalry, with Magic taking the Spartans to the NCAA championship to meet Bird and the Indiana State Sycamores. The game was a bit of a dud, and Magic won the championship - the first in Michigan State basketball history.

The commentators have been noting this every game and I have been waiting for the ESPN special since I first noticed Johnson in the stands. I finally found what I was looking for this weekend, complete with celebrity interview from one Snoop Dog.

The Spartans run and Magic in the stands is a nice reminder that before it was the Blue and Gold Showtime Los Angeles Lakers battling it out with the green and white Boston Celtics it was Spartans green verses a Sycamore powder blue. Either way it seemed to always come down to Magic and Larry.

This game is not going to produce nearly the legendary personal rivalry as the 1979 game, with only a handful of late first round and second round NBA prospects playing. This game is not going to add to the allure of the Big East. This game is not going to produce a true Cinderella. But this game will be a game worth watching in T minus five hours.

NCAA Championship Tickets