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It’s been quite a triumph for the NCAA selection committee and a devastating statement by the power conferences. But now that the Final Four is set and populated by nothing but No. 1 and No. 2 seeds with the very best of pedigrees, where’s the drama? More importantly, who do we cheer for?

There’s plenty of drama for my tastes and for those of anyone who loves March Madness, which this year has given us everything we could hope for in terms of competition and thrilling endings and even controversy. But what it hasn’t produced are any true surprises.

Nor has it produced one team that the casual fan can really identify with and get behind, whether because it’s a newcomer, a dark horse, an underdog or a Cinderella.

I suppose you could accuse Georgetown of filling that role, as it’s been a while since the Hoyas were among the elite of college basketball. But they won the Big East, they’ve got Roy Hibbert, one of the best centers in the country, and Jeff Green, their conference’s player of the year. They’ve won 30 games. They’re good.

I say that while admitting that it was shocking to see North Carolina crumble as it did against the Hoyas, and that overtime period was as ugly a five minutes as the Tar Heels have ever played in a big game. But shocking is different than surprising, and it’s hardly a surprise when a No. 2 knocks off a No. 1 in the NCAA’s.

So just one year after the game was turned on its ear when George Mason went to the Final Four and not a single No. 1 seed made the last showdown, we’ve got two No. 1s and two No. 2s. We’ve also got the regular-season champion of four major conferences, the Pac-10, Big Ten, SEC and Big East. Their combined record is 127-19. We’ve got no commoners in this one. It’s all royalty, top to bottom.

Besides the 127 combined victories, the four finalists have 36 combined trips to the Final Four. UCLA is there for the 17th time, which is the NCAA record. Florida may be relatively new to the top ranks of college basketball, but the Gators are the defending champions and are making their fourth trip to the Final Four — their third since 2000.

Ohio State, going to the final weekend for the 10th time in school history, is the No. 1-ranked team in the country and the tournament’s top overall seed. And Georgetown is going to its fifth Final Four.

True fans can get very cranked about the field, but casual fans need something unusual to grab hold of, a compelling story line that doesn’t involve free-throw percentages and turnover-to-assist ratios. The only thing vaguely resembling a story here is the Georgetown sidebar about John Thompson III, the son of the program’s founding father, and his player, Patrick Ewing Jr., son of the program’s greatest player from its glory days of a quarter century ago.

But after you’ve told that one once or twice, you’re left asking, “Okay, what next?”

There’s nothing next. I’m not really sure that any of the remaining teams really have anything to prove. Not like last year, when Billy Donovan, the Florida coach, had to prove he was good enough to win the big game, or a couple of years ago when Roy Williams was new at North Carolina and had to prove he could finally win the big game after a slew of near misses.

There are more reasons for some to root against teams than for them. If you’re a Pittsburgh fan, you’ll want to see UCLA lose because their coach, Ben Howland, abandoned the Panthers for the West Coast. And if you’re a Xavier fan, you’ll be rooting just as hard as you can to see Ohio State coach Thad Matta, who told Xavier fans he wasn’t going anywhere just before abandoning that program for the glitter of Columbus.

The legions of ACC haters have already had their Christmas twice, the first time when Duke went bye-bye in the first round and the second when UNC started throwing up more bricks than the third little pig, handing Georgetown a game that the Tar Heels should have easily won. But now that the ACC is out of it, their haters no longer have a booing interest in the tournament.

It’s all come just when we thought this would be the most wide-open and unpredictable tournament ever. Instead, it’s been almost all chalk.

It’s been hell on office pools, especially for those who knew something about college basketball listened to the experts who said you had to have a No. 15 advancing to the second round, a No. 3 in the Final Four, and couldn’t just follow the chalk all the way through.

So if you did everything right, you don’t have a chance in the pool — another reason not to get excited. Meanwhile the drone in the copy center who just moved the highest seeds through the brackets is looking at cashing in.

I guess that’s why they call it March Madness.

 

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