Now with the NCAA basketball bracket completed, we are all faced with the horrifying prospect of having to tune in to the NBA if we can’t live without our daily Charles Barkley fix on TV.

But trudge on we shall, with a great NCAA Tournament and an excellent Final Four fresh in the memory to remind us how much better the college game is than the farce the pro silliness calls hoops.

Apparently, it doesn’t matter how dangerously the college game creeps toward the NBA model.

You didn’t have to be a hoops junkie — and it seems like there are fewer and fewer of them these days — to appreciate what happened in that bubbling basketball hotbed of San Antonio.

Any of the four teams in the final weekend could have won it and been worthy. Florida just happened to be the last team standing Monday night to give the Southeastern Conference its first Shining Moment since 2012.

But aspiring champions might wish to take note of a common denominator — all four teams who reached San Antonio played mad-dog defense. Maybe that’s no coincidence.

Maybe there’s still a place for it.

It wasn’t always the prettiest basketball, but it was enthralling.

In the first semifinal, Florida and Auburn beat each other up like it was 40 minutes of rugby before the Gators advanced.

And that’s another good thing about the NCAA Tournament overall, but mainly, it seems, the Final Four.

In between the never-ending video reviews — which it seems like even the average fan is becoming conditioned to — it seemed like the zebras pretty much let them play without constant whistles.

So maybe it’s not so bad if Cinderella sits out the final dance after all. When that proverbial clock waits until the Final Four to strike midnight, it tends to be a hard and ugly fall, no matter how good the story line was going in.

Instead, it was all chalk, four No. 1 seeds. And, voilà — three exciting games, highlighted not by the championship, but the semifinal when Houston overcame a 14-point second-half deficit, capped by a 9-0 run in the final 33 seconds to beat Duke 70-67 in the semifinals.

Thrill of victory … Yes!

Followed by … awwwww … the agony of defeat.

The Monday championship game, which Houston led most of the way, was decided on a last-second Cougars turnover.

Evidently turnabout is fair play.

Still you had to feel for

Houston’s Emanuel Sharp.

He was setting up for a final win-or-lose shot when, suddenly, he was powerless to do anything about it, least of all shoot.

The ball slipped from his grasp — not far from his grasp, mind you. It was bouncing lazily right there in front of him, with the closing seconds ticking off, but he couldn’t even touch it. In fact, give him credit for realizing that if he did touch it, he’d have been called for traveling (it’s not that much the NBA just yet).

Problem was, it didn’t seem like any of his nearby teammates realized he couldn’t touch it; none of them seemed interested in it, and soon enough multiple Gators arrived en masse to grab it for them.

Game over. No whistles amidst the confusion.

Perhaps the biggest benefit to society from the Final Four was Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson introducing the term “toy poodle league” to
the lexicon. As when he reminded everyone that his Cougars didn’t play in any such thing, leading to speculation that was he pointing a finger at Duke’s ACC as being guilty?

Charles Barkley might wish to borrow it some time.
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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com