Congratulation to Louisville Cardinals and our WM!

Also

Thanks to Michigan Wolverines for letting me have happy ride with them during this tournament!

Eventhough my team was in short end,but this is one of best final games of March Madness I have ever witnessed.

The difference  of outcome of the game was Luke Hancock(MVP) was able to rally back from 12 points behind by
his 3 points in 1st half and relentless physical dominance in the paint by front lines of cardinals in 2nd half and
lastly Kevin Ware effect.

This is end of my reports for March Madness in 2013   Thanks for sharing with me for this event!  KJ

 

 

I was out entire evening for the SNU Alumni Party in Laguna Woods.
In the back of my head, I wondered a few times what was going on at the NCAA final
but the busy meeting kept me occupied all evening.

On returning home at 10:15PM, I saw the headline in the title page of Yahoo.com.
Then, I knew what happened. It was my last school away from my original home school.

College sports, especially basketball and football, are made up with more magical moments
than any other pro sports. It may be because our hearts are part of our old schools.
Or, could it be how the sports writers write their articles in a way to touch our souls?

Whoever won, it might not matter.
Anyway, it was wonderful.
I felt like I was back to "My Old Kentucky" !!

Thanks a million Dr. Hwang and everybody.
I appreciate our website being with us at the time like this !!

No. 1 at the Start, and No. 1 at the Finish

By GREG BISHOP
ATLANTA — Behind the Louisville bench, those in cardinal red remained on their feet in the final minutes, unable to sit down, or feel comfortable, or breathe. Peyton Siva drove and Gorgui Dieng swatted and Luke Hancock launched 3-pointers. Here was Louisville, the top seed in this N.C.A.A. tournament, playing like it until the end.
As the national championship unspooled Monday night, Louisville and Michigan put on a show, a production worthy of a stage, with acrobatics and dramatic flair, with stars in their usual roles and understudies in starring ones, with bodies that thudded when they hit the floor after so many collisions at the Georgia Dome.
It was Cirque du Soleil for the hoops set.
Louisville pulled from many elements, from its press and its pressure, from its outside marksmanship and its balanced scoring. The Cardinals (35-5) came from behind and seized control as the second half wore on. They ultimately triumphed, 82-76, as those fans danced and waved red towels and finally exhaled.
With that, a college basketball season as chaotic as any in recent memory ended, at once oddly and predictably, in favor of the favorite.
“These are the 13 toughest guys I’ve ever coached,” said Rick Pitino, officially a Hall of Famer now, before he revealed that he promised them he would get a tattoo if they triumphed on Monday night.
Bring on the ink — perhaps “Louisville 4-eva” across the chest.
The players left the bench in the final seconds and stood on the elevated court. At the end of the scrum stood guard Kevin Ware, who broke his leg earlier in this tournament, propped up on crutches, as confetti rained down on the court. Out came the championship hats and T-shirts, the black Louisville banner, the stage for “One Shining Moment.” Siva grabbed the flag and carried it around the court.
“These are my brothers,” Ware said on stage. “I’m so proud of them.”
So many elements. Hancock scored 22 points and earned most outstanding player honors while his father, who Yahoo Sports reported had a serious illness, watched from the stands. Pitino, who became the first men’s basketball coach to capture championships with two Division I colleges, worked the sideline. Siva, who once talked his father out of a suicide attempt, swayed back and forth and sang along to every song, karaoke but on a national stage.
The chosen few soon clustered on the court, as officials lowered the basket and the Cardinals snipped at one net with scissors. Dieng took his turn. So did another teammate. The basket was then lowered even more, as the assembled whistled and clapped and shed more than a few tears. Ware took the scissors and cut himself some nylon and held the net high in his right hand.
There it was. Louisville’s first men’s basketball title since 1986.
Afterward, Siva wore a clip of the net attached to a hat he had turned backward. Hancock carried the championship hardware with him to the interview room. He talked about the path he took there — lightly recruited out of high school, from prep school to George Mason to Louisville, all the way to Monday night, when he became the first nonstarter to win most outstanding player honors, according to research the N.C.A.A. said went back to 1939.
“There’s really no way to describe how I feel that my dad was here,” Hancock said. “It’s hard to put into words.”
Michigan players climbed first atop the stage for interviews, their eyes red, their faces glum. Their coach, John Beilein, had reached the final after some 35 seasons, many of them spent at the lower college levels. He called Monday night’s locker room “the most emotional I’ve ever seen.”
Of Louisville, he added, “I have not seen that quickness anywhere, and we’ve played some pretty good teams.”
The first half unfolded with a series of surprises, the pace frenetic, the play physical, each new twist as unlikely as the one that had proceeded it. Guard Trey Burke, the national player of the year in most quarters, scored Michigan’s first 7 points.
Then the game got weird.
Then the freshman Michael Albrecht, just as the freshman Gerry McNamara did for Syracuse against Kansas in 2003, turned the first half into his own personal 3-point contest.
Known as Spike to those aware of his existence before Monday, Albrecht connected on six shots from long range in the first half. He drove inside for baskets, a gnat among the giants. He took only seven shots and accumulated 17 points. He spelled Burke, who missed much of the first half with two fouls. He trended on Twitter, where he drew comparisons to Michael J. Fox in the movie “Teen Wolf.”
Here was a player listed at 5 feet 11 inches, a young man who looked more like a student manager than a “Spike,” a guard who did not score in 19 games this season and had one other scholarship offer other than Michigan’s — from Appalachian State. He bunny-hopped into the lane, dipped left, turned right and laid the ball in for a 33-21 lead. His teammates surrounded him at the timeout, slapped his shoulders, lifted him off the ground.
“That was probably back to my high schools days,” Albrecht said.
Yet just when it seemed as if Monday would constitute the most unlikely episode of Spike TV, the N.C.A.A. tournament version, Hancock put on his best Albrecht impersonation late in the first half. He closed the gap with four-consecutive 3-pointers.
That was how the first half went: the Spike and Luke show. Only in the N.C.A.A. tournament.
Back and forth it went. Siva staked the Cardinals to a lead with drive after drive, yielding 18 points in all. “You need to dig in,” Pitino told him. He dug. Burke drove and scored and trimmed the deficit. Siva elevated for a lob pass and laid the ball in. Glenn Robinson III took another lob pass and slammed it down. If this was not basketball of the highest quality, it was close.
Pitino lingered at the news conference. He talked about being voted into the Hall of Fame earlier in the day, about his family (“we’ve had a rough go”), and about Siva (“absolutely off-the-charts awesome”) and his teammates. His first championship came at Kentucky in 1996, before his N.B.A. struggles, before the extramarital affair and the extortion attempt that followed, before Pitino unleashed his latest hornet’s nest of a defense on college basketball this season.
“I’m absolutely amazed as a basketball coach,” he said.
Now, about that tattoo. Siva suggested Pitino get one on the lower back.
“He’s a man of his word,” Siva said, and they all laughed, the coach and his team, now champions. Bring on the ink.
■

PUBLISHED APRIL 8, 2013


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/sports/ncaabasketball/louisville-tops-michigan-in-ncaa-tournament-championship-game.html