A few writers had a discussion at last year's Final Four in Atlanta and tried to come up with a list of teams that could win the national title in 2007-08.

Ultimately (with the help of a handful of assumptions), it wasn't hard to agree upon five schools: North Carolina, Memphis, Kansas, UCLA and Georgetown.

And so a year later, four of those teams survive heading into the final weekend. Georgetown's the lone exception, the performances of Wisconsin (run off the floor) and Kansas (barely survived) against Davidson should assuage some of the pain from that second round loss.

The bottom line remains: Anyone could have conjured up this Final Four a year ago. It isn't often your see quite so predictable a collection of teams; the last time that might have been the case was 2001, when Maryland, Duke, Arizona and Michigan State all started the season in the top five (this comes with apologies to last year, when Georgetown opened as a top-10 team and then flailed around in November).

A big difference between '01 and this year, however, was that Maryland struggled in the middle of the season. There wasn't a time when this year's semifinalists ever really looked like they wouldn't make deep postseason runs. The last time all four teams remained anchored in the top 10 all season was 1993, when North Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky and Kansas made it to New Orleans.

--- Patrick Stevens