UCLA, North Carolina Advance to Final Four

By Trashtalk Superstar

Half of the 2008 Final Four field is set. UCLA and North Carolina punched their respective tickets to San Antonio (the host city for the '08 Final Four) with impressive wins on Saturday.

UCLA hammered Xavier 76-57, and North Carolina handled Louisville 83-73. More here.

UCLA joins Duke and Michigan State as the third school to appear in back-to-back-to-back Final Fours since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

North Carolina will be making its second Final Four appearance in four years, and its third Final Four appearance since 2000.


Edit:

Drive and Dish wants to congratulate UCLA on their achievement. Making it to three straight Final Fours is most impressive, indeed. It takes a combination of talent, experience, leadership and good fortune for a team to make it to a Final Four.

For UCLA to qualify for three consecutive Final Fours (and to do so without having a future NBA franchise player like Carmello Anthony or Greg Oden on their roster) is a testament to head coach Ben Howland and to the program that he's built.

Also:

The fact that UCLA is in the Final Four again means that more people will find Drive and Dish after running image searches for "UCLA Cheerleaders."

Drive and Dish usually gets between 50-60 hits a day from visitors who find our site after having stumbled across the following picture on a search engine (usually Google Images):

2006-'07 UCLA Dance Team at 2007 Final Four

Drive and Dish's subject matter is basketball. We're not trying to be Maxim or FHM. So we normally don't post pictures of "hot chicks" on this site. I put that picture up last year because the UCLA Dance Team is famous, and because their performances have become an integral part of the storied UCLA football and basketball tradition. I wanted to show various images from UCLA's game/victory celebration, and the image of the UCLA Dance Team seemed appropriate at the time.

Another reason that I put it up is because it's just a great picture (not to mention the fact that Drive and Dish ACC/Duke expert and college basketball commentator Mark Buckets had some success with running game on a couple of flirtatious UCLA Dance Team members at the 2006 Final Four in Indianapolis -- but Mark Buckets' girlfriend ultimately found him with the UCLA girls and put an end to his shenanigans). But I never realized just how much people love those UCLA Dance Team girls.

No wonder so many sports websites and blogs put up daily pictures of hot cheerleaders. Hot cheerleader pictures drive traffic to your site (which is why you won't find too many pictures of Yale cheerleaders, Carnegie Mellon, or Columbia Cheerleaders circulating on the net).

Drive and Dish doesn't make content decisions based solely on what we think will drive traffic to our site. If we did, Drive and Dish would be filled -- wall to wall -- with cheerleader pictures, swimsuit shots and photos of various campus "hotties." And our posts would be filled with shtick and flame throwing, controversy generating attacks on players, coaches, teams and fan bases.

This website is about basketball. All about basketball. Nothing more nothing less.

Having said that, I've decided to ease up on the reins for one day and let some of our junior Drive and Dish associates (and interns) have a say in determining the content of this site. Thus, Drive and Dish reluctantly presents more pictures of the UCLA Cheerleaders and the UCLA Dance Team (but after this, that's it!: no more cheerleader pics for you):