2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Blu-ray Movie Review

Wildcats Roar!

Reviewed by Martin Liebman November 8, 2018

Most sports fans can make a case that their sport's tournament or path to the championship is the greatest of them all. Baseball has well more than a century's worth of history behind it. Hockey fans will claim the Stanley Cup playoffs are the ultimate test of endurance, skill, and will. NFL fans can brag that the Super Bowl is just about as big as anything else on the annual schedule, sports related or otherwise. The NBA always seems to fid a way for its greatest stars to shine brightest in the finals. But college hoops fans know that the NCAA tournament is a one-of-a-kind spectacle, perhaps only eclipsed by the Super Bowl, in terms of widespread popularity, even amongst those who aren't particularly in-tune with the sporting world or the college basketball landscape. A field of 64-plus teams are ranked and bracketed and play in single-elimination games that are often at the peak of high sports drama. As the field whittles down, particularly to the "sweet sixteen" and "elite eight" and "final four," the tension mounts, the excitement grows, and history looms.

For the 2018 tournament, the bracket included four top-ranked teams: Virginia, Xavier, Villanova, and Kansas. Virginia entered play with the most wins (31) and fewest losses (2) but lost the shocker of the century to 16th ranked UMBC -- University of Maryland Baltimore County -- by a score of 74-54, a loss which more than likely ruined every single bracket in the world before things could even really get going. Top-seeded Xavier would lose in the round of 32 to Florida State by five points, all but ensuring every bracket had been busted. Kansas would fare better, marching through the tournament on the way to the Final Four and ousting powerhouses like Clemson and Duke along the way, while Villanova would win every game by double-digits, including the Final Four matchup against Kansas (95-79) and the final against Michigan (79-62). It was a year of upsets but also a year of destiny and dominance for the Wildcats.

The game's opening minutes would see the third-ranked Michigan Wolverines take a 7-point lead over the Wildcats, 21-14, halfway through the first half. But the Wildcats would rebound to dominate the court in the final 10:30 of the half, going on a 23-7 run to enter the second half up by 9, 37-28. The Wildcats would remain steadily ahead through the second, never relinquishing a double-digit lead, en route to the 79-62 victory which was never in question for the entire second half. Villanova's hero would be of the unsung variety. Backup player Donte DiVincenzo (who is now with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks) dropped 31 points and was named the tournament's most outstanding player.

The Blu-ray presentation is very basic. It's the game and nothing more outside of the pair of mid-game and postgame highlights and breakdown discussions. There are no commercial interruptions and the action flows fairly freely; the 40 minutes of gameplay time fits into a 72-minute presentation, which includes breaks for fouls, free throws, time outs, out of bounds plays, and the like. It's little, if anything, more than a DVR recording edited down to subtract commercials and other interruptions. With the length of the game, it's fine as it is, but it feels a little empty as a release. At the very least, Villanova's Final Four game (if not each of the team's games throughout the tournament) would have been a nice addition, as might have a narratively driven companion that detailed the team's season from training camp to cutting down the nets.

2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080i, 1.78:1-framed transfer that essentially recreates the original broadcast presentation fans saw on TBS, complete with the TBS "bug" appearing throughout at the top-right corner of the screen. Viewers will note some visual anomalies, such as some shimmering along straight lines on the court, notably the line dividing the court and the sideline area at the top of the screen. Definition is adequate, with good core facial (hair, pores, sweat), uniform (mesh and lettering), and court (wood grain) textures that certainly don't match the quality of high end digital films but at least recreate the level of basic clarity fans saw on the television broadcast back in April 2018. Colors are not particularly well saturated. They're agreeably punchy around the court with the festive San Antonio blue the dominant hue beyond the basic wooden court and the team uniforms, with special emphasis on Wolverine blue. On-screen graphics, whether the TBS bug or the info cluster at the bottom of the screen (score, clock, etc.) are perfectly sharp and legible. The aliasing is the only real technical bugaboo.

2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 soundtrack. It's a bit shrilly and hard-edged. Courtside commentary is the primary element. It's imaged nicely towards the center and prominently featured and prioritized above crowd din and squeaking sneakers. Don't expect cinema-quality vocal recreation but do expect just-fine essential verbal clarity and distinction between the participants. Crowd din rarely finds any distinction or separation; it's just kind of "there" under the commentary and sounds muffled, unbalanced, and uneven. Sneaker squeaks, whistles, horns, public address announcements, and other prominent game sounds are folded in but the limited channels mean home listeners won't really get a sense of the arena's size or the sound's positioning.

2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship contains two extras. The release ships with a DVD copy of the program and both discs ship in a standard DVD case, which is the norm for these Team Marketing sports releases.

• Halftime Report (1080i, 7:37): TBS' panel, which includes Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny "The Jet" Smith, and Clark Kellogg breaks down the first half's action.
• Post-Game Ceremonies (1080i, 17:01): The same panel from above recaps the game action. The piece also looks back at tournament highlights and features additional coverage from Greg Gumbel and Seth Davis, clips of the on-court celebration (including the net-cutting ceremony), and more.

2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship is a straightforward release that presents the final game interruption-free. The packaging is a little misleading with the "Final Four" logo so prominently featured; the set does not include Villanova's win over Kansas or Michigan's victory over surprise Loyola. It would have been interesting for Team Marketing to add at least part of the pre-game show to get a sense of where the experts believed the game to be going prior to tip-off, but the halftime report and postgame commentary are at least welcome additions in what is otherwise a fairly spartan supplemental section that would have benefited from media day clips, player and staff interviews, and the like. Video and audio are fine for this sort of release. Recommended to Villanova fans and NCAA hoops fans in general.