Winners and Losers

It is as the sports Almighty intended it. For every winner, there is a loser (take that and your nil-nil ties, soccer!). For every Tiger Woods, there is a Detroit Lion. For every Isiah Thomas as a player, there is an Isiah Thomas as a general manager, league owner, boss and suspected poor Parcheezi player. And for every North Carolina with its win for the program's ring, there is a Wake Forest, which now hasn't made the Final Four since Carolina coach Roy Williams entered puberty. Check out FanHouse's breakdown of the winners and losers of the NCAA tournament, other than those five-time national champion Heels.

The Winners | The Losers

Ty Lawson -- The last time a digit got this kind of press, it was detached in a cup of chili at Wendy's. That Lawson managed to beat back the press clippings of Tyler Hansbrough, a fella whose fawning press coverage President Obama and Tim Tebow probably have a Facebook page set up to decry, is impressive. That he managed to out-do his own toe was a show in one-upmanship. Lawson deserved every glowing word, handing out 34 assists against just seven turnovers, numbers that would make John Stockton be glad he hung up the short shorts. And besides, we're told one of those seven was the toe's fault.

Tyler Hansbrough -- Hansbrough now has every trophy handed out this side of the VIBE Awards. Knock him for his goofier-than-an '80s sitcom antics, but the senior laid down a royal flush for his career at North Carolina.

Missouri -- Coach Mike Anderson knows everything there is to know about heat, from the blast-furnace defense his team runs to the warm seat he found himself on to start the year. Needless to say, after Missouri's upset of Memphis and fantastic showing in the Elite Eight, Anderson doesn't have to worry about packing his bags against his choosing anytime soon. Anderson may have a problem replicating this success, as his 10-man deep, 40-minute long car crusher of a defense was a matter of calculus more than simple arithmetic, but in a tournament with no Cinderella, Missouri was the darling.

Cleveland State -- For one night, at least, Cinderella wore a Viking helmet. There was so much positive to say about the Vikings' win over fourth-seed Wake Forest that if you started listing everything that went right that night at tip-off, the Deacons' season would've been finished long before you were. Gary Waters earned a helping of redemption after unceremoniously resigning from Rutgers in 2006, capping a three-year turnaround in Cleveland. And the school itself returned to March Madness in the same Cinderella manner it's known for, following its 1986 upset of Indiana with a fitting encore and neatly bridging its legacy over an embarrassing scandalized past.

Durrell Summers' Dunk -- Your highlight of the tournament. Not only did the Michigan State guard slam over Stanley Robinson, he carried the Connecticut forward's palm into the rim, kind of in the way a bug meets the grill of a Mack truck. " I kind of like my chances with a guy back-pedalling and me going straight up," Summers said the next day. "He got a little piece of the ball. I just kind of instinctively tried to overpower it a little bit." Yeah, instinctive. Only if he was a lion and Robinson was a raw side of beef.



Arizona -- The Wildcats were winners simply by making the field, their 25th consecutive NCAA tournament, and they now trail North Carolina by just two for the record all-time run. Making a Sweet 16 run, before losing in biblical proportion to Louisville, may have just re-affirmed that the talent was there all along, but in a season of turmoil, the Wildcats still outlasted all of the Pac-10.

Trent Johnson -- The LSU coach's success may be slightly inflated – he inherited a senior-laden team and a healthy Tasmin Mitchell, who missed all but three games of John Brady's final season on the bench – but he's already proved himself to be an infinitely more skilled bench boss than his predecessor. Credit him too, for giving North Carolina its toughest contest. The Tigers were tied with the Heels with eight minutes to play before Lawson switched to a gear no one in college can defend. But putting a scare into the behemoth of this year's tournament is a little like making Clark Kent think twice before hitting the phone booth.

Villanova -- It had been 24 years since the Wildcats last set foot in the Final Four and toppled brawny, undershirt-wearing Georgetown in an upset for the ages. Now Jay Wright has his own shining moment and a program that may be on the way to a continuous apex even Rollie Massimino didn't reach. More impressive was the blue-chip pelts Villanova collected on the way, routing UCLA by 20, Duke by 23 and withstanding Pitt in the best NCAA tournament game in years.

Scottie Reynolds – So long as there are montages, the Dash for Detroit will always have a place among them. If Summers had the highlight of this tournament, Reynolds had the play, a near halfcourt drive through more defenders than it seemed legal for Pitt to play and that ended with the juniro draining the game-winning shot ato send Villanova to the Final Four for the first time since 1985. There was a half second remaining when the ball went through the hoop, the first half second of the sports eternity that shot will be remembered.

Big East – Everything said about this conference turned out to be as real and brutal as a DeJuan Blair elbow. A record five teams made the Sweet 16 and half of the Elite Eight hailed from the league. A Big East team didn't cut down the nets (in fact, only Villanova cut down any nets as Connecticut bypassed the tradition after winning the West), but there should be no doubt which conference was the nation's best, particularly in its top tier.

Honorable Mention: Chief Kickingstallionsims. The Alabama State center had an awful play-in game, scoring zero points as his counterpart, Morehead State's Kenneth Faried, scored 14 points to go with 21 rebounds, but he'll always have a spot in the NCAA tournament all-name bracket alongside Fennis Dembo, Harold Arceneaux and others. And this time, he won't be in the play-in game.

Also, North Dakota State's Ben Woodside, who scored 37 points in the Bison's loss to Kansas.

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