Chapter 66: The Final Four
The day after the end of the competition between the University of Michigan and Georgia Institute of Technology, all major sports media in the United States invariably put Sun Yue's photo on the front page, and on the other side of the ocean in China, Sun Yue has appeared on the front page of Baidu, Tencent and other major comprehensive media, which shows how much popularity Sun Yue brought to lead the team to the NCAA national semifinals.
As for the so-called ban order of the Beijing Chaoshen Club, these media have long been forgotten, and the Beijing Chaoshen team has long since slipped all the way to the end of the CBA league after Sun Yue left for the United States, and recently there have been frequent conflicts with the Blue Association because of the refusal to let the young player Zhang Qi participate in the training camp of the national youth team.
A team that is in the CBA league is declining, and on the other side is Sun Yue, a guaranteed lottery show and an NCAA superstar who led the team to the semifinals alone, and anyone with a discerning eye knows how to choose.
Especially after Yao Ming landed in the NBA, Chinese fans' love for basketball has been rising, and they are even more happy to see the good results achieved by athletes from their own countries in foreign countries. After Sun Yue led the team to the NCAA semifinals, more and more Chinese fans were not satisfied with watching Sun Yue's games through videos and over the wall, and more and more fans were calling on CCAV5 to broadcast Sun Yue's games in the NCAA, as for this appeal was ignored by CCAV, they still insisted on live streaming dragon boat races and marathons in the morning.
On April 4, the elite quarterfinals were all over, and the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina defeated their respective opponents in the quarterfinals and successfully reached the top in their respective regions, and the high-profile semifinals were also released. On April 6, Beijing time, the four teams will usher in the final challenge to compete for this year's championship.
According to the schedule, the first semifinal will be played on April 6, with the University of Michigan taking on the University of Illinois. The second semifinal will be played on the afternoon of April 7 with Duke vs. North Carolina. The winners of the two semi-finals will advance to the Grand Final, which is scheduled to be held on April 9.
This year's Final Four is scheduled at the University of Phoenix Coliseum, a multi-purpose venue that usually serves up to 72,200 fans at home of the NFL team's Arizona Cardinals, compared to the NBA's largest attendance at the Bulls' Home Union Center, which averages around 21,000 people per game this season. To put it simply, there are more than twice as many fans in a game in the Final Four as there are in a game in the NBA.
As for the ticket price of the semi-finals, it is also ridiculously expensive. To go to an NBA game, the cheapest ticket is about $10-$20 a ticket, and you can sit in a good position for one or two hundred dollars. The ticket price for the Final Four starts at $337, which means that the farthest and highest position is also $337 a ticket, while the ticket price for the lower half of the arena is about $3,000-6,000, the price of a sideline ticket is nearly $10,000, and the price of a box ticket is nearly $67,000. Such an expensive ticket is now hard to find. Unbelievable? That's the crazy charm of the NCAA Final Four.
According to the figures provided by major broadcasters, the average viewership of the NCAA Final Four over the years is about 20 million, and the ratings are so high that the TV broadcast contract is also extremely amazing, even compared to the NBA Finals, it is only high.
When the final four of the NCAA are about to start, major sports TV stations have specially broadcast the final four battles of previous years at midnight on these days, and many people are still watching at this time, which can reflect the expectations of fans across the United States for the NCAA Final Four.
Finally, with the eagerness of basketball fans across the United States, the feast of American basketball events - the NCAA Final Four is about to begin. On the cover of the new issue of the famous American magazine "Sports Illustrated", the four teams in the Final Four were not listed, but only the photos of the three players were published, and the Final Four was summarized with a headline called "The Year of the Point Guard".
The three players are Raymond of the University of North Carolina. Felton, University of Illinois Delong. Williams and the protagonist of the book, Sun Yue, the star of the University of Michigan.
In the nearly half year from October 2004 to April 2005, this originally unknown Chinese point guard relied on his wonderful performances one after another to become a hot new star in American basketball.
Although when he first entered the NCAA, Sun Yue was discriminated against by some people because of his skin color, and after the accusation of the Beijing Chaoshen Club, Sun Yue's reputation has always been disliked by some fans.
But competitive sports speak with strength, and after Sun Yue's undoubted outstanding performance this year, there is no longer any sports media to talk about Sun Yue's identity as a yellow race, and few fans have belittled Sun Yue's so-called "bad deeds" in China before.
On the contrary, whether it is in various basketball newspapers and magazines, or in major basketball forums, most people use the language of praise to describe Sun Yue, a Chinese point guard.
But this skipper, who was praised by major newspapers and magazines, was unusually silent after arriving in Arizona and did not accept any media interviews at all.
Because Sun Yue knew at this time that concentrating on playing the next games was the right way, Coach Tom also sternly refused all sports reporters' requests for interviews with Wolverine players.
Because Sun Yue, who was reborn, understands that the praise of him by the major sports media is just a façade, the Wolverines have not won the championship yet, as long as there is a little mistake in the next semi-finals, those media who have fallen into the well will definitely appear, and how much praise and praise there has been before, will pour more intense doubts and criticisms on Sun Yue.
For Sun Yue, who was accustomed to seeing all kinds of trolls on major basketball forums in his previous life, the higher he held, the harder he fell, he knew much better than any college athlete.
But not every college athlete has such a cool head as Sun Yue, such as the University of Michigan's current opponent - the University of Illinois star Dee. Brown didn't know whether to face ESPN's beautiful reporter pride, or because of the previous regular season and regional tournament multiple defeats to the Wolverine, said in an interview with ESPN's beautiful reporter Erin Andrews that he would easily defeat the Wolverines in tomorrow's game, and would completely lock Sun Yue.
However, according to what Sun Yue learned from Ledlow, Di. Brown should have been guaranteed a draft pick from an NBA team, which is why he made a big fuss in the interview.
And Sun Yue from Di. In just a few words of Brown's interview, the University of Illinois' defensive strategy was already clear, which was to completely block himself.