Our annual spring fling with college basketball reaches its apex this afternoon with the Final Four. There's not much suspense left in the bracket games we have entered -- we'll finish either second or third in one of them, and well out of the running in the other -- but both of today's games are intriguing.

The first contest pits against each other two teams who most would have thought had no business in the national semi-finals, Virginia Commonwealth and Butler. VCU's presence is remarkable in that many pundits said they had no business being in the tournament at all. Butler's is noteworthy in that last year, they were the shocking Cinderella, finishing as overall runner-up. Both teams have lovable young coaches and wonderful back stories, and with any luck they should play a close game throughout. Since hardly anyone has either of them on their brackets at this point, rooting will be based on other criteria. We're siding mildly with Butler, as their making the finals two years in a row is a tale that goes beyond amazing.

Whichever of those teams wins, they'll be a deep underdog to the victor of the second game, between Kentucky and Connecticut. Plenty of folks saw one or both of these teams making it this far -- we have UConn in our Final Four -- and both have played well to get to this point. Kentucky has seemed slightly hotter, but a week off and a trip to hype-filled Houston may cancel out their momentum. We're hoping for a heavyweight bout, and will be rooting for Kentucky, but again without a lot of oomph. Part of us just wants to see the overrated Big East Conference, which got too many berths in the tournament, sit down and shut up. But we won't be surprised if the Huskies roll over the Wildcats.

When the championship game is over on Monday evening, we can go back to ignoring the collegiate game for another 11 months and get ready to watch the Trail Blazers writhe through another playoff series -- or (one hopes) two.