How Would You Grade This Year’s NCAA Tournament?

The 2011 NCAA Tournament is officially over, and people are still probably rocking Storrs, Connecticut this morning in celebration of UConn’s national title game victory over Butler last night.

And while the ugliness of championship game might leave a sour taste in people’s mouth, overall, I thought this was a pretty outstanding tournament.

I’m a sucker for great stories, and there were just so many in this year’s edition of March Madness.

You had the incredible run by VCU. You had Butler making it to back-to-back title games. You had traditional power, Kentucky, getting back to the Final Four. There was the Richmond Spiders getting to the Sweet 16. And how about Morehead State’s incredible win over Louisville? And the list goes on and on.

Of course, the one that topped all of those was the run by the Huskies to win the whole thing.

So again, while the championship game won’t be on ESPN Classic anytime soon, there were so many parts of this tournament that were exciting that I don’t think it should impact it too much.

Statistically, it was the weakest field in NCAA Tournament history, but it was still fun to watch, and there were a whole lot of games that came right down to the wire. And for the first time ever, with the expanded television coverage, you were able to see all of them.

Despite the fact that my Vanderbilt Commodores were bounced in the first round by the aforementioned Spiders, I’d still classify this as an excellent tournament.

How about you? What did you think of this year’s tournament as a whole?

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