Hlas column: Finally, a Final Four for the little guy

This has been the best NCAA basketball tournament ever.

No matter how the Final Four plays out, this year's NCAA men's tourney has been tops. Thrilling finishes, crazy finishes. Great stories, highly unlikely stories. Little that anyone predicted two weeks ago.

ESPN said that of the 5.9 million brackets it got from people chasing immortality and wealth two weeks ago, only two had the Final Four of Butler, Connecticut, Kentucky and Virginia Commonwealth. Two.

Had people used the time-tested method of picking names out of a hat, they'd have fared much better. Remember that next March, all you students of the game.

So is this a watered-down Final Four? That's in the eye of the beholder. I say absolutely not.

Everyone had the same chance to win their way to Houston. The four surviving teams all had their moments of truth, pulling out triumphs in games that had to be won on the last offensive possession or defensive stand.

Butler turned it into an art form, with three victories by three points or less. It seems like long ago now, but Kentucky scored with two seconds left to win its first tournament game, over Princeton.

So we've got Butler and VCU with old-money UK and UConn, and even those two traditional powers weren't supposed to get this far. You can't ask for more than this scenario. Unless you're old-money Duke, Kansas, North Carolina, Michigan State, etc.

This year's tournament is for the little guy and gal. We never win much of anything else in this life. We only see limousines from the outside of the tinted-glass windows. We dine on pork and beans, not with kings and queens. So savor this:

Colonial Athletic Association: Its fourth-place team is in the Final Four. Big Ten: Its champion, Ohio State, the top-seeded team in the entire tourney, flamed out in the Round of 16.

Horizon League: One of its regular-season co-champions is in the Final Four. ACC and Big 12: Their conference-tournament champions, Duke and Kansas, wonder where it all went wrong.

There's a word for this. It's called “beautiful.”

The giants of college football have always known how to swing their hammers, with the BCS a prime example. But college basketball, while not a true democracy, permits a lot of stragglers to compete for its championship with the confidence that the moneyed monsters will cut them off at the kneecaps before the tourney gets to its final week.

However, there has been a growing uprising. First, George Mason slipped into the Final Four in 2006. Butler bulldogged its way to the title game last year. Now, Butler is joined by VCU to form half of the finalists, and one of the two will play for the crown next Monday.

Does it mean anything? Is college basketball worse than it's been in ages? Are the mid-majors better than they've ever been?

Maybe, probably, who cares, and not necessarily in that order. This year's tourney has been a lottery. If you replayed it from the start, only Kentucky and UConn would be likely to get out of the first week alive, with no guarantees there.

Butler beat Old Dominion on a last-second shot in its first NCAA game, then nipped Pittsburgh thanks to an insanely foolish last-second Pitt foul. The Bulldogs won their regional semifinal over Florida in overtime. Had one less shot gone in the basket for the Bulldogs in any of those games, regulation, or had Florida made one more shot, the Butler saga is stopped at impressive instead of impossible.

The hardest thing VCU did was hypnotize the NCAA Selection Committee into giving the Rams a place in the tourney. After that, no problem. VCU has four double-digit wins in the tourney. It pulverized Big Ten runner-up Purdue by 18 points. It was the superior team when it played Big 12-champion Kansas.

But had VCU not escaped Florida State in overtime last Friday night, it's a nice story that would already be forgotten outside of the commonwealth.

If you want three or four No. 1 seeds in your Final Fours, you probably are a fan of the Lakers or the Yankees or Donald Trump.

However, if you believe in the notion that America is the land of opportunity and anyone can win “American Idol” and then go on to be elected president of the United States, this is your Final Four.

Go, Butler! Go, VCU! This revolution is being televised.

Speaking of television, here are Scott Dochterman and yours truly talking tourney: