This yr’s males’s basketball Ultimate 4 is as “chalky” as chalk will get: All 4 No. 1 seeds within the bracket complicated from their respective areas.
Even with the expectancy that prime seeds have a greater shot at achieving the Ultimate 4, this yr marks simply the second one time since NCAA Event seeding started in 1979 that every one 4 No. 1 seeds complicated to the overall weekend.
The one different yr such an prevalence spread out was once in 2008.
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Here is what the school basketball and pop-culture panorama seemed like the final time the Ultimate 4 was once made up totally of most sensible seeds.
The vacation spot is acquainted …
The 2008 and 2025 Ultimate Fours percentage something that does not contain the seeding of the groups: the San Antonio surroundings. San Antonio will host its 5th Ultimate 4 this weekend.
School basketball lovers will likely be in success if the thrill of the 2008 match is replicated this yr on the Alamodome. The 2008 match was once determined by the use of an exciting nationwide championship recreation, with the Kansas Jayhawks topping the Memphis Tigers in additional time. The competition is considered one of simply two males’s basketball nationwide name video games to be determined through additional time within the twenty first century.
… however the taking part groups’ fates not sure
The 2025 Ultimate 4 systems had been all in very other spots on the finish of the 2008 season. Houston, which was once in Convention USA, made a run to the School Basketball Invitational semifinals. Duke earned a No. 2 seed within the NCAA match however was once disillusioned within the spherical of 32 through West Virginia.
Florida, contemporary off back-to-back nationwide championships within the two years prior, skilled a down yr, dropping 5 of its seven regular-season video games en path to an NIT bid. Auburn completed 14-16 at the yr, together with an removal within the first spherical of the SEC match.
Leona Lewis tops the charts
Sitting atop the Billboard Sizzling 100 the week of the 2008 Ultimate 4 was once Leona Lewis’ hit “Bleeding Love,” from her debut studio album “Spirit.”
Becoming a member of Lewis and “Bleeding Love” in Billboard’s most sensible 10 that week had been numerous different memorable songs and artists, together with “Love in This Membership” through Usher (that includes Younger Jeezy), “Love Music” through Sara Bareilles, “Low” through Flo Rida (that includes T-Ache) and “Do not Forestall the Tune” through Rihanna.
Grand Robbery Auto IV flies off cabinets
Weeks after the 2008 Ultimate 4 wrapped up in San Antonio, Rockstar Video games launched Grand Robbery Auto IV.
The sport was once neatly won, after which some. Its liberate generated $310 million at the first day, incomes a Guinness International Document for “Very best Grossing Video Sport in 24 Hours.” Grand Robbery Auto IV held up in opposition to a important eye as neatly, with its design and gameplay garnering rave critiques.
Somewhere else within the sports activities international, a vintage NBA Finals matchup loomed
Because the 2008 faculty basketball season wrapped up, its skilled counterpart was once simply beginning to tools up for the postseason — and the 2008 NBA Finals delivered a historical conflict.
Two of the league’s maximum storied franchises — the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics — met to make a decision that yr’s champion. It marked the eleventh time the 2 groups confronted every different within the Finals. Boston, led through Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, prevailed over Kobe Bryant’s Lakers in six video games.
