It's one of the days I look forward to every year: the Saturday evening games in the NCAA Final Four.

There is usually one team that comes out of the woodwork as fans look forward to some Cinderella crashing the big dance, but this season, it is probably more akin to Dancing with the Stars as opposed to some sort of ball with the appearance of a mystery guest. Oh sure, some will say that Villanova and Michigan State are "party crashers" this year, but in truth, the 2009 final four participants are a quartet of programs with a solid pedigree.

As a basketball person, it's great that the Final Four has obtained such notoriety, even in Canada where basketball doesn't always rank near the top of the list when it comes to rabid fan support and media coverage. But it wasn't always that way. The biggest Saturday in college basketball has been to some relatively obscure sites over the course of its history. It has been everywhere from on campus arenas to domes in cities from Tampa to Seattle. In fact, this event has become so big a happening that it has not been in a regular "arena" since 1996 at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. In that season Rick Pitino's Kentucky Wildcats defeated John Calipari's UMass Minutemen and then won the title by taking out Jim Boeheim's Syracuse (at the time) Orangemen. Off the top of your head, if you remembered that Erick Dampier and Mississippi State were the fourth team then you are as big a college basketball nut as there is anywhere. Since then the Big Dance has needed a big dance floor where only a dome could satisfy the pockets of the NCAA poobahs.

It is amazing the impact that the excitement of the game can have on a person during the formative years. I was a young kid in who cried when I heard Bob Lanier of St. Bonaventure tore up his knee when the Bonnies lost to Artis Gilmour's Jacksonville squad. I never did see the game as I was at a tournament playing in a Park and Recreation championship.

I can think back to the one of the first Final Four's that touches my memory banks in 1974 when North Carolina State upset UCLA in double overtime. It was an amazing game on that particular Saturday afternoon. That memorable day was the one that grabbed my attention and had me looking forward to the next one the following year. The site was Greensboro, NC, and I remember turning down a road hockey game with my buddies to sit inside to watch the game. The image of NC State's David Thompson, one of the original "sky-walkers" returning to the court with his head bandaged looking like the fifer from the famous painting depicting the American Revolution is still indelibly etched in my mind. NC State eventually won the title on the Monday night, but it's the Saturday thriller that I'll remember.

How about the breathtaking finish in 1975 when legendary coach John Wooden of UCLA took the Bruins to the Final Four for the last time. The Louisville Cardinals led by one of Wooden's former assistants, Denny Crum, held a slim lead late in the game when back up guard Terry Howard went to the free throw line and missed the front end of a one and a bonus to give the Bruins life. Howard had not missed a free throw all season hitting on 28 in a row before his miss opened the door just enough for the Bruins to win the game in overtime and extend Wooden's run to the title. UCLA capped it off with a win over Kentucky on the Monday night as my brother and I were forced to watch the grainy picture on an old Philco TV in the basement because my mother was watching something on the "new" colour TV upstairs. By the way, that something was the Academy Awards.

In this season as everyone looks back to the 30 year anniversary of the Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird match up where Johnson's Michigan State Spartans won the title over the Sycamores from Indiana State, some forget what a gut wrenching Saturday game ISU needed to win to advance to the Monday final. The boys from Terre Haute, Indiana won an old fashioned "barn burner" and survived a scare from legendary coach Ray Meyer and the DePaul Blue Demons led by a burly Chicago youngster who would later become a NBA champion in his own right, named Mark Aguirre. The two point nail biter almost had the entire Jones family miss a reservation to celebrate an anniversary dinner.

But for many of a certain vintage, the best Final Four game on a Saturday afternoon took place in 1983 when the University of Houston Cougars and the basketball fraternity of Phi Slamma Jamma took down the Louisville Cardinals in a game that featured an aerial show that would fill highlight reels across the continent. Oh yeah, I forgot, there were no highlights on in Canada. Who cares, I watched the game. At one point the players were watching the highlights at the game. That's when Houston's Benny Andres came down the lane for a dunk and when he landed his momentum took him out of bounds just long enough to look at the replay of his jam on a CBS monitor positioned on the baseline.

Georgetown fans will remember their Saturday win over Kentucky in 1984. The Hoyas took turns treating Kentucky's Jim Master like a pylon as they spread the floor in the days before the implementation of the shot clock and drove past him like he was wearing hip-waders lined with cement.

Great Saturday moments will always arise: