Any time games are not close, and they certainly weren't on Saturday, the impulse is to complain. I felt it too: my trip to the neighborhood pub Saturday with friends was deflated and maybe even ruined by the North Carolina derby. Right around the time it was 40-12, everyone I was with had moved on almost entirely. They were ordering food, checking cell phones, sending flirtatious text messages to girls that probably wanted nothing to do with them ... they were no longer focused on the games. Two consecutive beatings will do that to a casually interested observer.

But I was entertained. Memphis-UCLA was a startling display of force by a team loaded with NBA talent. It was also yet another bafflingly good game from Derrick Rose. Kansas-North Carolina was wholly satisfying, not only because the Jayhawks raced to a ridiculous first-half lead, but because you knew Carolina was going to make a good run at it and they actually did. Could both games have been better? Absolutely. Maybe tonight's game will suck, too. But it's hard to see the amount of talent on display Saturday and not be at least a little excited, even in a blowout.

The Kobe + Barry = OhMyGod Performance of the Day: Derrick Rose

Saturday night Derrick Rose had 25 points and nine rebounds at the point guard position, numbers which, if you saw the game Saturday but weren't keeping track of any of those newfangled stats like "points," -- where I come from, we only record crisp two-handed chest passes -- would probably sound just about right. That's about the most you can hope for from your point guard, especially when your first scoring option is Chris Douglas-Roberts.

Ahem. Let us now pause for CDR identification.

Three thoughts occurred to me while seeing this live:

1. "Oh Kevin. Kevin Kevin Kevin. Get out of the way, dude! Don't be a hero."
2. "Joey Dorsey finds this just as entertaining as I do."
3. "Memphis is so good they're laughing at UCLA."

Anyway. The point I was making about Derrick Rose is that mathematically he had an incredible game, but he was so good that 25-and-nine doesn't even come close to doing his game justice. It really doesn't. When on the floor, Rose literally controls everything -- ball's on a string, all that -- and moves the tempo of the game at his and John Calipari's whim. There were times Saturday that Rose would look over at his coach and see Calipari screaming for him to push the pace, and, as if switching something on, would immediately change the tempo of everyone on the entire floor. No one on UCLA, least of all Darren Collison -- who can officially consider himself acquainted with what it takes to be a legit point in the NBA -- could stop him.

Honorable mention: Chris Douglas-Roberts. See above. Brandon Rush -- for great plays down the stretch to head off the king of all Kansas collapses. Dear. God. Without Rush, people all over Kansas would have been leaping from all the tallest buildings in the state. Fortunately, the tallest building in Kansas is two stories. There would have been a few broken ankles, but nothing too serious.

The This Is What We've Come To/Michael Vick Performance of the Day: North Carolina

It's hard to pinpoint one individual's performance among the weekend's games that was specifically a letdown. No one stood out. Instead, the award goes to North Carolina as an all-encompassing negative, because, depending on what time it was during the game, Carolina managed to do almost everything wrong.

They allowed 57 percent effective field goal percentage while scoring only 39.5 themselves. The gap in true shooting percentage (59 to 44) was almost as lopsided. And that's for the whole game -- those stretches when Kansas was seemingly impossible to stop, when the Jayhawks raced out to a 40-12 lead in the first half, were almost too ridiculous for words. The common expression in the bar I was in was resigned wonder: "Wow. Huh. Weird. I guess that's that. Wow." What else are you supposed to say?

Addendum: I actually felt bad for Kansas fans when the lead started to slip. Here they are, almost back in the championship game with a dominating performance over new rival North Carolina (darn that Roy Williams for coaching at his dream school, darn him!), rolling to a huge lead, needing only to cruise at medium pace the rest of the game ... and here comes North Carolina. I don't know if I ever felt the game was in the balance, but I could imagine being a Kansas fan as the lead was cut to four. Filtered for four-letter words, it would probably be something like: "Fudging Self. Fudging basketball. Why do I even watch this fudging game. Fudge it. When I get home I'm jumping off the post office steps. Goodbye, cruel world." They won, so everyone's OK, but I'm sure that 10 or so minutes when a collapse was still in doubt ... that had to be a tough stretch.

Quick Sequitur Futures Analysis: We've got the rest of the day to analyze the game, but if I had to make a quick pick based on what happened Saturday, which I don't, but which I will do anyway, I would pick Memphis. As good as Kansas was Saturday night, it was clear that once North Carolina actually realized they needed to play defense in order to win in the Final Four, the Jayhawks looked far less impressive. That, I guess, is my way of saying that Kansas' win looked more the product of UNC being, for whatever reason, unprepared. (Or just really bad.) Memphis' win, on the hand, looked to be 100 percent the product of Memphis' superior talent. UCLA never looked unprepared. Merely overwhelmed. Winning or losing never comes down to one team as inseparable from the other, of course: both teams contribute to wins and losses. But Memphis looks to have entirely earned their way to Monday night. I'll be interested to see if the Jayhawks can come close to dislodging that sense of destiny.

Related: The Big Dance, Cram Session