This year's Final Four has a distinctly western flavor

Drew Timme.
(Image credit: Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

Perhaps more than any other sport, college basketball is accused of "East Coast bias." Those complaints from fans of West Coast fans may be justified at times, but, generally, teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East, Big Ten, or SEC do make up the bulk of the Final Four. That's not the case this year.

For the first time on record, all four teams in the semifinals of the Men's Division I tournament are from west of the Mississippi River, which means there will be a champion from that half of the country for the first time since 2008, when Kansas won the title.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.