March Madness: We have a champion!
The Kansas Jayhawks, who spent the last four weeks of the season as the nation’s No. 1 team, will spend the offseason there too.
Led by sophomore guard Devon Dotson and senior center Udoka Azubuike, the Jayhawks beat the BYU Cougars 87-78 in our computer-simulated NCAA basketball tournament, aka Merc/EBT Madness.
The victory was the 22nd in a row for the Jayhawks (34-3), matching the program record. It is the fourth national championship for Kansas basketball (1952, 1988, 2008), tying Connecticut for sixth all time, one behind Indiana and Duke and two behind North Carolina. UCLA leads with 11, followed by Kentucky with eight.
BYU (29-9) had never reached the Final Four, but made a Cinderella run through the West Regional,
knocking off No. 1 seed and conference rival Gonzaga in the final. The Cougars were seeking to become the first national champion from the West Coast Conference since 1956 when Bill Russell and the San Francisco Dons won their second straight.
Kansas, which had won all five of its games by double digits (and an average of 21.4 points), never trailed after breaking a 7-7 tie. The Jayhawks built a 24-13 lead with a 17-6 run that included only four points by Azubuike and none from Dotson.
Dotson finished the game with 22, 18 coming in the second half. Azubuike, the 7-foot center from Nigeria, made 9 of 10 shots for 21 points and also had 11 rebounds. Kansas had a 43-25 advantage on the boards.
BYU, which trailed by as many as 13 points in the second half, was down by only 71-68 with 3:39 to play. But
Kansas scored the next six points and sealed the victory by making 10 of 11 free throws.
Jake Toolson led BYU in scoring for the second game in a row, hitting nine of 11 shots, including 5 of 6 from behind the arc, for 24 points. Yoeli Childs had 22. TJ Haws, the third senior star, endured one of the toughest games of his four-year career, making only one of his 10 shots and finishing with five points.
In addition to Dotson and Azuibuike, Kansas got 10 points apiece from Isaiah Moss and Ochai Agbaji. For the second game in a row, Marcus Garrett had doubledigit assists with 11.
• This 63-game tournament — just like the real thing — was conducted with a bracket from ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and a game-simulator from whatifsports.com. You can conduct your own tournament, or pretty much any game — baseball, football, basketball, hockey — in any year by visting www. whatifsports.com.