The Future (Dawson Garcia signs!) And Past (2003 Marquette vs Louisville 2013 and other greats)

The break between games gave a chance to look at the future, with the huge signing of 6-foot-11 5-star Dawson Garcia, as well as resuming my board game of all-time greats with the 2003 Final 4 team playing the 2013 Louisville national champs.

Since I last posted here on the debut of the all-time greats game, we finished the beta testing and more than 14,500 clicked on this link to the instructions and free game. Please give feedback or ask questions at 404.606.3163 via text of call if you try the game.

Unfortunately, Dwyane Wade fouled out with 4:22 left in the game, freeing Russ Smith to finish with 21 points, and Louisville forced 19 turnovers while only giving up 12. One difference in the game from real life is that the game uses a set number of possessions whereas those two teams would have played more. Here is a photo of how the game is played.

If you click on the images you can see the score sheet with stats for each player as well as the playing cards for the starters on each team.

While the free game provides playing cards for 48 teams, I group them by conference. Marquette also lost to 2007 Georgetown 62-74, but defeated 2014 Creighton 84-83 and 2002 Cincinnati 73-62. My tiebreaker in my Big East standings is average score differentials so the current standings are:

2004 UConn 3-1, 71-47 average score
2013 Louisville 2-1, 72-65
2018 Villanova 2-1, 74-69
2007 Georgetown 1-1, 76-71
2002 Cincinnati 1-1, 71-75
2003 Marquette 2-2, 68-73
2014 Creighton 0-2, 72-85
2010 Butler 0-2, 54-80

If you are wondering about 2003 Syracuse, they are 4-0 in my ACC, where 2009 Pitt is 1-2.

The other conference leaders are 2008 Kansas at 4-0 in the Big 12, 2018 Purdue at 3-0 in the Big ten, 2017 Gonzaga and Oregon both at 2-1 in the Pac12, and 2019 Auburn did stun 2012 Kentucky in the closing seconds of the two 3-0 SEC teams.