This year's Final Four pairings are absolutely insane in terms of there being two teams - Butler and Virginia Commonwealth - that I would bet nobody had in their brackets. Nobody in the entire world expected VCU to get there, and after Gordon Hayward, the star of last year's NCAA runners-up, went to the NBA, everyone pretty much figured Butler wasn't going past the first or second round, either.

But, here they are - two teams everyone had getting blown away in the first round, playing each other for a spot in the championship game. I don't think we've had such an unlikely semifinal game in the history of college basketball.

Now, take those two teams and factor in Richmond, who, against the odds, made it to the Sweet Sixteen. Richmond wasn't supposed to do anything in the tournament this year, but they ended up taking out Vanderbilt and Morehead State (who beat Louisville) to advance to the third round of the tournament. So, putting these three teams together, we had a really surprising Sweet Sixteen with some ridiculously low seeds surviving, and some ridiculously high seeds getting sent home.

What do these three teams have in common?

The strength and conditioning staffs of each of these programs are all HUGE supporters, readers and customers of Elite Fitness Systems.


With Butler, I've dealt with coaches Jim Peal and Ross Bowsher extensively, and they're "EFS guys." With VCU, there's probably no bigger EFS supporter on the planet than head Strength and Conditioning coach Tim Kontos, who although I don't think he works with men's basketball, is a major customer of EFS and is a big part of the whole galaxy of coaches whose information is available here.

And with Richmond, strength coach Jay DeMayo is a huge supporter of the site - and I know for a set in stone fact that the Spiders basketball program uses Prowlers extensively to condition their guys, because I GAVE THEM ONE OF THEIR PROWLERS.

When you think about it, this is big time. Here you have mid-major programs, with young, hungry aggressive coaches, showing everyone who reads this site what can happen when you do the right things. Butler, VCU and Richmond don't get the same kinds of players that Duke and Kentucky do, but they can compete with - and beat - these schools partly as a result of going about things in an intelligent manner and pulling out all the stops for their players.

I can't speak for UConn and Kentucky, but I know for a fact that two of the teams in the Final Four were directly affected by EFS - and I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the two teams that had to totally overachieve to get where they are. When you're on this site, give some thought to the fact that you're in a big time place, reading big time stuff, buying big time products, with the same foundation and background as people who are doing big time things. I don't know about you, but that's motivating as hell for me.