March Madness Championship Game Wrap-Up: CBS and UConn Win, We Lose

For a tournament year marked by spectacular upsets and a few last-minute buzzer-beating finishes, it was a truly ugly championship game between the UConn Huskies and the Butler Bulldogs.

How ugly? How does a final score of 53-41 strike you?

There's definitely something to be said for a solid defense, and it certainly seemed as though both teams had one. But the result of two excellent defenses and two struggling offenses is one boring, sloppy game. Butler shot just 18.8% from the field, which is a record low for an NCAA Championship game.

But that didn't stop the culmination of March Madness from leading CBS to an overall ratings win last night. Even though "Dancing with the Stars" was the single most-watched program with 18.1 million, CBS averaged 14.3 million viewers in primetime, which beat the other networks.

However, the championship game was down in viewership by more than six percent from last year, when Duke won it all. That might be due in part to the early exits of many of the big basketball powerhouses with large fan bases, such as Kentucky, Duke, and Ohio State.

But that's the beauty of the tournament, isn't it? A team like VCU can manage to make it to the Final Four, a team like Butler can get to the championship game, and a team like UConn with a 9-9 conference record can go on an unheard-of hotstreak and win it all.

Still, next year let's try to score more than 100 total points, shall we?