DETROIT —- A running joke emerged late Saturday night here, and it happened to be connected with the two national finalists.
SEE RELATED:
Indeed, Michigan State and North Carolina will play for the title tonight. Maryland happened to beat both of them.
So the over/under on how many times this fact will be publicly mentioned in the next 365 days is approximately 73. And we media folks received salvo No. 1 (ONE, ONE salvo, mwa ha ha ha) around midday Sunday alerting us to this development.
So, yes, Maryland did beat both finalists. But so have these teams since 1993-94 (data courtesy of collegerpi.com):
2004: North Carolina (Connecticut and Georgia Tech)
2001: Stanford (Duke and Arizona)
2000: Purdue (Michigan State and Florida)
2000: Kentucky (Michigan State and Florida)
1996: Massachusetts (Kentucky and Syracuse)
—- Patrick Stevens