One of these things ...

 ... is not like the others. Although it once was, way back in the Before Time.

See, at last we have our Final Four. And it is Gonzaga, Baylor, Houston and ... UCLA?

Wait, what?

You mean 11-seed UCLA? You mean the UCLA that was down 13 to Michigan State in the first half of a play-in game? You mean the UCLA that lost its last four regular-season games, and finished fourth in the Pac-12, and lost nine games in the regular season?

Yes, sir. That UCLA.

Hung on to oust 1-seed Michigan in the Elite Eight last night, 51-49, and don't ask me how that happened. The Bruins just sort of scrounged around and made the game ugly the way Mick Cronin's teams tend to do, and they got 28 points from Johnny Juzang, who kept the wheels on when UCLA was down early. And now they get another 1-seed, unbeaten Gonzaga in the Final Four.

UCLA in the Final Four. 

Turn the clock back to 1970, to bell bottoms and Vietnam and Hell, No, We Won't Go. To Cambodia and battle lines bein' drawn and the Chicago 7, and to Bummer, the Beatles just broke up. To John Wooden and Lew Alcindor and Lucius Allen and Bill Walton, who was counterculture all the way but loved the squarest man in America like a second father.

The ultimate overdog then, the Bruins are the ultimate underdog now. The overdog is unbeaten Gonzaga, which not all that long ago was everyone's favorite Cinderella story. Now it's UCLA wearing that glass slipper, the fourth 11-seed to reach the Final Four in 16 years.

Of course, the others were named George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth and Loyola. Not, you know, once-upon-a-time buckets royalty.

 Remember the other day, when the Blob said college basketball in 2021 is not the same game it was back in the day?

This isn't quite quite what I meant. 

But it works anyway.