2018 final four
1 hour and 43 minutes
We are at the Residence Inn Ann Arbor Downtown, our gracious hosts and yours this fall if you act fast enough.
We Couldn’t Have One Without the Other
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1. The Championship Game: Emotionally Drunk
starts at 1:00
Better to lose to a guy we respect than a criminal sex vampire. Brunson doesn’t bother us—like you can’t be mad about a guy Michigan wanted badly when Michigan gets is pure as the driven snow. Analysis is Donte DiVencenzo made off the dribble jacks four or five feet behind the line. Really could have used the Wagner Three Point Principle. Poor performances previously probably hurt Michigan in fatigue. Gameplan was fine: wide looks from three with their best shooters, 66% from two, lots of possible and-ones rimmed out. DiVencenzo heat checks prevented any getting back into the game, Nova ORebs were lucky and also Spellman, but that’s overstated: they didn’t convert them. Who could have predicted this Big Ten (/points at selves). Beilein as Tyrone Biggums of tape. Remember the bubble watch columns. Good feels.
2. Next Year: The Us
starts at 26:11
Position by position. PG: Indicators are if they want to get better shooting they have to cut into Z’s minutes. What’s a DeJulius who doesn’t have to start and can just come in to heat check? Eli Brooks is a guy Jay Wright wanted! POOLE! And Adrian Nunez? Anyway Skauskas/Levert breakout for Poole. Matthews expected back, think they can make him a shooter. Poole should take some pressure off him. Also Iggy should…be a McDonald’s All-American. The four, Livers?—feels a bit like early D.J. Wilson. Was 1/12 from three in last 14 games. Johns has a physical presence, Iggy gets buckets. Center: Moe has a decision to make. Unleash Teske: between great and game-changing rim defender. Redshirt Castleton if you can and use Davis.
3. Next Year: The Them
starts at 1:06:39
Around the Big Ten: anyone good? Wisconsin? Isaiah Roby? Let’s go with Roby. Penn State is interesting even though they lost their best player. Michigan State will need to lean on their back court. Don’t trust Indiana or a Pitino team despite some intriguing guys. Northwestern fans suddenly care about recruiting. Ohio State will be dangerous but maybe not in 2019.
4. Ace’s Hockey Podcast wsg Anthony Ciatti
starts at 1:22:42
ND is a very interesting matchup given the previous games. Sticking with ND was the turning point in Michigan’s season, sweeping them was the destiny punch. Typical Jeff Jackson team that’s super disciplined, lacking in high end scoring, great goaltending (not Hobie-worthy). Have not scored a lot of even strength goals. ND has the best player—the guy in net—but Marody and Hughes are the best two players on the ice. A moment for Quinn Hughes: he’ll be on the ice a lot!
Ohio State or Duluth? M-D has more variance; Michigan hasn’t played a team like that with a lot of young, well-coached talent except Wisconsin, and Wisconsin is a worse matchup than even “we’re 0-5 versus” Ohio State: don’t count the first two games, the second two M outshot OSU 3-2 since. DON’T TAKE PENALTIES!
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MUSIC
- “It’s Not Too Beautiful”—The Beta Band
- “Countdown”—Phoenix
- “Brother”—The Rural Alberta Advantage
- “Across 110th Street”
THE USUAL LINKS
- Helpful iTunes subscribe link
- General podcast feed link
- Direct download link
- What's with the theme music?
It does feel nice to not have it be the criminal sex vampire.
A blue day. A shoe day. Ere the sun rises! [Patrick Barron]
Something's been missing to take the edge off before Michigan games since the free programs ceased being economically viable: scientific gameday predictions that are not at all preordained by the strictures of a column in which one writer takes a positive tack and the other a negative one. Something like… Punt-Counterpunt, except for basketball.
BLOCK
By Bryan MacKenzie
Everyone loves an underdog. It's a big part of what makes March so much fun. Invariably every year a double-digit seed bombs their way into the Sweet 16 - or beyond - and we get to learn about their little quirks and storylines and idiosyncrasies. Remember Dunk City? Havoc? George Mason? They are fun stories with fun, new characters. And just as importantly, unless your team is one of the Goliaths slewn (slewed? slained? slewned?) by these Davids, their stories are harmless and free from the usual baggage that comes with established foes. Loyola-Chicago isn't a long-standing rival. They never beat Michigan for a key recruit. They aren't coached by an archetypal Evil Coach like K or Cal or Boeheim.
But take a look at Michigan with those same fresh eyes. Pretend for a moment that you just emerged from a century-long coma, and observe these Wolverines. They are led by a 5'nothing" point guard who has shut down some of the best point guards in the country through sheer force of aggrievement. He launches ludicrous sky hooks and teardrops over guys a foot and a half taller than him. He has the biggest mood of all the moods.
Their captain and shooting guard is a 2-star who they stole from Harvard. Their best shooter and 6th man of the year is a guy who transferred from Division 3. Their best player is from 7,000 miles away and who apparently learned his (fluent) English by watching, like, the Bad Boy Pistons and Joe Pesci movies. They have Jordan Poole, who... my God, Jordan Poole.
They play precise, intricate basketball. They run the kind of offense that overmatched teams run to try to manipulate matchups. They play White Wide Receiver Adjective defense.
Take the names off the front of the jersey, and this is a "Cinderella team." It's just that if John Beilein were your Fairy Godmother, the pumpkin coach wouldn't have needed horses because it would have gotten 37 miles per gallon, and it wouldn't have turned back into a pumpkin for like three or four weeks. And the coachman would have shot 37% from three.
There's no question that Loyola has captured lightning in a bottle. You don't get to the Final Four as an 11-seed without a little magic. But some combination of John Beilein's wizardry, the timely emergence of talent, a coalescence of karma and chemistry, and the right coins being tossed in the right wishing wells has led a nondescript bubble team to rattle off 13 straight wins (including seven Top-30 wins), and has them once again eyeing a ladder and a pair of scissors.
When you boil it down, this is a basketball game. If Michigan hits, they win. If they don't hit, they might still win. That's good enough for me.
Michigan 74, Loyola-Chicago 63
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CHARGE
By Smoothitron
Three hundred and fifty fanbases a year end the season knowing the wrong team accomplished what they desperately wanted for themselves. We try to avoid it. We do our best to apply reason to it. We acknowledge and honor fantastic achievements like conference championships and Final Four runs, but with each of these banner’s sweet memories comes the inescapable shadow of what-could-have-been. It’s the price we pay for the elation of another glorious B1G tournament, or Jordan Poole answered prayer; we treasure them on their own merits, but we ache for them to be the stepping stones to something more. We know these moments need no specific coda to give them meaning, but when that light at the end of the tunnel just keeps getting bigger, it becomes incredibly difficult to separate the joy from the regret.
Look no further than Michigan’s last Final Four team for the perfect example. Michigan has had a run of recent success under Coach Beilein that even this fickle fanbase has no choice but to look back upon fondly. Images of the brashest Canadian blowing kisses and a kid from Detroit clapping in the face of those that doubted his toughness dance in our heads. Mention 2013, however, and something altogether different burns brightest in our minds.
Team 97 earned a protected seed in the NCAA Tournament, claimed 3 consecutive wins over Kenpom top 10 teams on their way to Michigan’s first Final Four in decades, and its star player was a National Player of the Year that drilled a shot only very recently challenged for the title of Michigan Basketball’s “The Shot”. Even within the title game, we had an insane hot streak from a bench player put us on all cloud 9, if only for a few minutes. Despite all this, an inexplicable, inescapable call dominates their legacy.
Optimism pervades the Michigan community regarding this game, and not without reason. I’ve looked at the advanced stats, they look good. I’ve consumed a borderline-irresponsible number of takes regarding this matchup; people are mostly picking Michigan, and those calling a Loyola win are playing Major League Feelingsball. When common sense and the numbers agree in your favor, it’s a wonderful place to be. There is no good reason to believe Michigan will lose this game, but I’ve seen Jordan Morgan’s layup hang for eternity on the rim before falling harmlessly away. I’ve seen a Kentucky team with no shooters hit almost 70% of their threes, including the game-winner in our best defender’s grill. I’ve seen a Derrick Walton jumper that was absolutely destined to take us to the Elite Eight carom away.
There are reasons behind every win and loss, but those reasons don’t have to be any good.
Loyola Chicago 68, Michigan 62
Final Four! Frozen Four! When to buy? What to buy? How to buy? Any tricks?
Final Four
Sorry this is coming out too late to be a part of the volatile part of the market. There was a point when Michigan and Loyola were the only two fanbases who knew they were going to San Antonio, and then prices shot up from $200 to $250 (official ticket exchange) the second Kansas and Nova fans got in (these are after-markup prices). The cheapest ticket to go by since I’ve been tracking this week is $120.
They’re at the high now and should stay that way until a fuzzy point tomorrow when UPS is no longer a good option. This restricts the salability of the tickets and the price starts coming down until gametime. Because of the nature of this beast a huge amount of tickets are bought on the secondary market, and with expensive flights booked there’s a lot of impetus for buyers to buy. Don’t buy at the high.
As the market’s settled down it’s formed into three price tiers:
- $I-Don’t-Care: Premium seats were purchased as soon as they went on sale by brokers looking to capitalize on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of great seats for a Final Four/Championship run. They were bought as session seats and are selling separately. The reasonable ones went right away so all that’s left are $3,000 moonshots that nobody will buy (about 110 seats like that on the market). WAIT on these. They’ll drop as gametime approaches—perhaps down to as little as $600 for Final Four.
- $Good seats: Once you’ve given up on being down low at half court there’s a middle tier that’s going for about $500 now and should come down to the $400s, but they’re also slowly disappearing from the bottom-up. Behind the basket and corner are the same—it’s just about what someone’s trying to offload. You can also find some club seats in this price level since the Alamodome has a ton of those.
- $Get me in the building: The cheap seats are all upstairs, either Upper Baseline or Plaza Level. They’re also available as mobile tickets so they’ll be trading right up to the finish line. These are moving at about $200-$250 though there are a bunch listed for more in better rows (saw four for $300 each in row 1 today). Right now you have more options where to sit—wait for a real person to put up a “sell now” and jump.
Note that season ticket holders got access to lower bowl seats for $385 face—I noted wryly that a bunch of seats went up for $1,385 on Sunday night.
The rows for the premium seats are a bit weird and you should pay attention so you’re not sold a seat 20 rows higher than it sounded like. Rows 1, 2, 3, and 4 are what they say on the tin, then it goes A-Z, then AA-QQ, then 20-35. So row “F” is 10th row, and “FF” is 36th row, and “Row 20” is really Row 47. Seating upstairs goes Row 1 to 28.
I pinged Ralph Garcia from TicketIQ for some history and he sent me a little data:
| Year | Metro | AVG | Get-In | Quantity | Teams |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Houston | $595 | $161 | 1,220 | Butler, VCU, UConn, KY |
| 2012 | New Orleans | $722 | $190 | 1,854 | KY, Lville, OSU, Kan |
| 2013 | Atlanta | $887 | $309 | 1,145 | Lville, Wichita, Mich, Cuse |
| 2014 | Dallas | $790 | $199 | 5,689 | UConn, Wis, Fla, KY |
| 2015 | Indianapolis | $1,108 | $290 | 6,803 | Wis, Ky, Duke, MSU |
| 2016 | Houston | $1,025 | $239 | 1,966 | Okla, Nova, UNC, Cuse |
| 2017 | Glendale | $1,343 | $214 | 1,813 | Oregon, UNC, Zaga, SC |
| 2018 | San Antonio | $1,036 | $250 | 1,837 | Nova, KU, Mich, Loy |
The 2015 bump is because they dramatically raised the face price—that tends to set the market more than the teams in it.
Which fanbases are in can make a big difference (the 2014-’15 qtys are from when TicketIQ was an official resale partner I think). I don’t pay much attention to “average” price though that’s what the ticket resellers like to report. Michigan drove the 2013 prices, though that was the first trip in decades in a city filled with Michigan fans. This time I think it’ll be more in line with the Houston numbers—Michigan and Kansas fans are the big travelers in the bunch.
Championship Game?
For you Loyola fans, the good news is once you defeat Michigan there should be a lot of Michigan tickets for sale. Prices either drop 25% if the favorites make it in, or 50%+ if they don’t. More data from Ralph:
| Year | Metro | AVG | Get-In | Quantity | Teams |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Houston | $316 | $60 | 3,056 | UConn, Butler |
| 2012 | New Orleans | $362 | $65 | 4,289 | Ky, Kan |
| 2013 | Atlanta | $468 | $90 | 4,182 | Lvill, Mich |
| 2014 | Dallas | $426 | $90 | 12,091 | UConn, KY |
| 2015 | Indianapolis | $761 | $181 | 9,136 | Duke, Wisconsin |
| 2016 | Houston | $746 | $102 | 4,562 | Villanova, UNC |
| 2017 | Glendale | $679 | $133 | 2,930 | Gonzaga, UNC |
| 2018 | San Antonio | $619 | $120 | 2,560 | ??? |
Again you see when face value went up historically. The big takeaway here is don’t buy ahead—there are going to be some really big Nova or Kansas fans who bought awesome “both sessions” seats going home and putting these up for what they may. If you can’t get cheaper than what’s available, you can probably get better. Right now those are going in the $300s or $400s. But you can still shop for deals—I found a lower level right now for $357.
Craigslist after the first two sessions will light up like a pinball machine, and that’s a good starting point if you’re in San Antonio and sticking around a few days. WARNING for Craigslisters: the Spurs are one of a handful of teams that now use a terrible app called Flash Seats; sometimes that’s a good way to ID a real person but the reason they use it is the app has all its protections for the seller and not you. Note that their reviews are either real people with major complaints or good bot reviews.
If you’re in SA, keep in mind this isn’t like the last round, where few people flew in just for the second match. People will go to a championship game who didn’t go to a Final Four. So if you’re on the ground, take advantage by playing the people walking out of the building, and the types who’d love to meet on the way to the airport on Sunday.
This is one of those times when I think your seat does matter. You’re going to remember going to this game (when’s Loyola going back to the national championship game?) and the markup from getting in to getting down isn’t that huge unless you’re trying to sit in the lower bowl. Here’s where waiting to buy championship tickets also helps: if you don’t like your seat in the first game you’ve now had a night to suss out the place. Plus the seats that go on sale will be pretty random, whereas they’re being bought up in order of niceness/price.
Where the Maize People At?
Section 113-118 (southwest side) is Michigan’s allotment, so if you’re trying to sit near more Michigan fans your best bets are to sidle around that: 316, 318, 320, etc.
E-Ticket Situation
They do exist, but so far they’re a tiny part of the market, and marked up because of convenience.
Flight Situation
Flying to San Antonio is going to be a super premium right now. I personally find Texas very drivable despite the long distances—traffic jams up outside the main cities all the time but they’ve got wide and open freeways where the buffalos roamed, and you have to try really hard not to find an amazing barbecue joint en route.
Austin is just an hour and a half away. Corpus Christie is 2 hours. Houston is 3 hours and you go through a city named Flatonia.
Parking
The State of Texas (nisi Austin) is a hellscape of pavement with no parking that pays to host national events because that’s what passes for their tourism industry. This goes triple for San Antonio. The Alamodome is just off to the side of San Antonio’s main downtown area, across the freeway from the convention center. So it’s kind of like trying to park in Detroit for a World Series game if you just picture Comerica Park on other side of I-75. There are structures and adjacent lots that will be sold out, some parking lots in not-great neighborhoods behind, and lots and lots of downtown. Here’s a map of official alternative lots.
There is an Amtrak station just next door but note: the Amtrak station is not the giant beautiful “Sunset Station” train station. One day maybe I’ll tell you about how I tried to find the train station and wound up crashing an airline magnate’s son’s wedding.
Frozen Four
Thinking about making the run to Minneapolis? Tickets are going to be available for about $80-$100 for the ND game (one week from today) and probably drop to the $60s for the championship on Saturday. You’ll spend more getting there than getting in, and it’s a beautiful arena with no bad seats so if you’re going just get in.
Why is This Night Different from All Other Nights Seth?
If they put this game any time except when I have to lead a Passover Seder for both sides of extended family, deiyanu.
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