It's one of the busiest times of the year for the sports calendar.
Congratulations to the University of Connecticut Men's School and the University of South Carolina Women's School on becoming college basketball national champions. Connecticut completely dominated the tournament. They won most of their games by double digits, winning their final game against Purdue by 15 points. They accomplished their mission of winning consecutive games. It's easy to acquire players, and top players can transfer freely, so I think this kind of management will become easier. On the women's side, South Carolina had five new starters from last year and was able to finish the season undefeated. South Carolina was a very tall team and dominated everyone in the regular season and tournament.
No. 2 Iowa State has had two very exciting seasons. It was fun watching Caitlin Clark dominate the college basketball world in the media for two years. She plays like a combination of Steve Nash and Stephen Curry. Now that she's playing in the WNBA, she hopes her popularity will lead to higher salaries for WNBA players and better TV ratings. I don't know why the rest of Iowa's teams didn't get the attention they deserved until the Final Four. They were really good too.
Dawn Staley is much younger than UW coach Geno Auriemma, who appears to be nearing retirement, so I think South Carolina will take over in terms of being the most popular team for high school players to go to from Connecticut.
The NBA regular season is coming to an end. The picture for the Eastern Conference playoffs is wide open in terms of who is likely to make it to the conference finals alongside the Boston Celtics. The Milwaukee Bucks just lost their best player, Giannis Antetokounmpo, for an undetermined amount of time due to a calf injury. With only three games left in the season, no one knows when he will be able to return. This opens everything up for the New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, and hopefully the Philadelphia 76ers. Joel Embiid just returned from a knee injury. He's only played the last three games and he's been surprised by how much better the team has been playing with him. I don't know if the 76ers have enough support for Joel for the team to reach the conference finals, but we'll see.
This week is Masters Week. It's my favorite golf tournament to watch all year long just because of how beautiful Augusta National is and how iconic the second nine holes are. Tiger Woods will be back to play in tournaments, but he has only played one and a half rounds in official competition this year due to injury, so I don't think he has much of a chance of winning this year. The weather doesn't seem to be helping the players this week either. Rain in Augusta delayed the start of the first round by two and a half hours, meaning the Tigers will not be able to finish the first round until Friday. This will give him and the afternoon players more than 20 holes to play on Friday. So far Bryson DeChambeau has won with 7 under par. Since he plays on the LIV tour, I don't get to see him on a regular basis to find out how well he's playing. We predict the winning score to be between 12 and 15 under. I'll give you an overview of the tournament next week, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how this weekend's matches play out.