Luke Hancock leads Louisville onto the practice floor Friday (Getty Images)

A week of build-up has finally given way to Final Four day at last. Here's one last look at some of the keys to Saturday's two national semifinals:

No. 9 WICHITA STATE (30-8) vs. No. 1 LOUISVILLE (33-5)

How the Shockers got here: Defeated No. 8 Pittsburgh, No. 1 Gonzaga, No. 13 La Salle and No. 2 Ohio State

How the Cardinals got here: Defeated No. 16 North Carolina A&T, No. 8 Colorado State, No. 12 Oregon and No. 2 Duke

Did you know? Wichita State is trying to become the first team seeded ninth or higher to advance to the national title game. The four who reached the Final Four prior to the Shockers each lost in the national semifinals.

Three keys to the game:

1. How will Wichita State handle Louisville's pressure? Wichita State averaged 12.8 turnovers and ranked 144th nationally in turnover percentage, neither of which is especially encouraging when facing a team with as ferocious a full-court press as Louisville's. The good news for the Shockers is they survived VCU's swarming "Havoc" defense with only 13 turnovers in a 53-51 November road win. The bad news for the Shockers is any slip-ups Saturday will be costly because Louisville is proficient at turning turnovers into fast-break buckets.

[Related: Louisville success goes beyond Final Four]

Nick Wiggins (Getty Images)ATLANTA — As Wichita State guard Nick Wiggins fielded questions in the locker room on the eve of Saturday's Final Four matchup with Louisville, the subject matter quickly turned to a familiar topic.

Everyone wanted to know where his kid brother was going to attend college.

Andrew Wiggins, the Class of 2013's premier high school player, has visited Florida State, Kansas, Kentucky and North Carolina. The younger Wiggins would complete one of the best recruiting classes of all time if he chose Kentucky, but his older brother isn't so sure Andrew is Lexington-bound.

"They've got a couple kids coming (back), they got seven or eight dudes that are already signed to come in off the (McDonald’s) All-America team, and I don’t feel like it would be the best fit for him to make his own legacy," Nick Wiggins said. "But in the end, he’s going to make the best decision for him."

The price of being Andrew's older brother is Nick gets asked at least two or three times a day about what school his sibling will choose. Having a younger brother who plays the same sport yet commands so much more attention can't be easy, but Nick insists he has no problem with it.

"It is never something that bothered me," he said. "I'm very proud of him. He deserves all the attention he gets. He works very hard. I'm just happy for him."

Mitch McGary (Getty Images)

ATLANTA — Before he emerged as one of the nation's most coveted basketball prospects late in his high school career, Michigan big man Mitch McGary was known for something else around his neighborhood in Indiana.

(via @MitchMcGary4)Believe it or not, he was a skilled unicyclist.

Having watched classmate Spencer Stockwell delivering newspapers on a unicycle when they were kids, McGary became intrigued enough to ask his friend to let him give the contraption a try. His older brother eventually bought him a unicycle of his own for his 12th birthday, a gift McGary cherished so much that he spent all his free time for weeks perfecting his riding ability.

"I fell on my face plenty of times," McGary said. "Busted up my knees, elbows and hands, but it was all worth it finally achieving that goal."

McGary eventually he became proficient enough at his unusual hobby that he could jump curbs and even fill in for Stockwell on his paper route and ride the unicycle around their 1.4-mile neighborhood loop without falling. He said Friday on the eve of Michigan's Final Four matchup with Syracuse that he still owns three different types of unicycles, each varying heights and wheel widths.

That McGary can ride a unicycle has received as much attention the past few weeks as his late-season emergence as a formidable interior scoring threat. Not only did ESPN broadcast crew Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery mention it during a game earlier this season, a photo of a well-coiffed McGary riding his unicycle before a high school dance spread quickly via social media this week.

Bacari Alexander placed Pringles chips on the shoulders of each Michigan starter (via YouTube)

ATLANTA — On Easter morning, a few hours before Michigan's Elite Eight matchup with Florida last Sunday, assistant coach Bacari Alexander approached student manager Jamie Peretzman with an unusual request.

Alexander urgently needed a can of Pringles potato chips.

"I didn't really know how many places would be open Easter Sunday, but I found this shady corner store that happened to be open," Peretzman said. "I wasn't sure what he needed it for, but I brought a can of Pringles back to the locker room."

The purpose of the shopping trip became clearer just before tipoff when Alexander took out the can during his pregame speech and placed a single Pringle on the left shoulder of each Michigan starter. The message was for Michigan to play with a chip on its shoulder, something the Wolverines clearly took to heart in jumping to a 23-5 lead before Florida even knew what happened.

[Also: Kevin Ware T-shirt debacle exemplifies why NCAA's business model is under attack]

"I came up with the idea because I saw one of the managers in the lobby eating chips, and I had an 'aha' moment," Alexander said.  "I thought to myself, if we're going to have any success against Florida, we're going to have to play with a chip on our shoulder, so what a great, corny way to drive that point home."

If Michigan players got a chuckle out of Alexander's speech, they certainly weren't caught by surprise. The assistant coach has used an array of props to emphasize certain pregame messages in the Wolverines locker room.

Wichita State players celebrate beating Ohio State last Saturday (Getty Images)

ATLANTA — The first time Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall noticed his team getting a little too full of itself, the Shockers had reeled off four straight late-January wins to crack the top 15 in the polls.

In the locker room before the Shockers hosted Indiana State on Jan. 29, Marshall brought his players together, urged them to refocus and and punctuated his speech by asking them, "Are you satisfied?" Wichita State players bellowed "no" in unison ... and then delivered a lackluster performance in a 13-point loss to the Sycamores.

"We took it for granted and we got popped the next game," guard Fred VanVleet said. "We're keeping that in mind now and trying not to get too high on our success."

The Wichita State staff has reintroduced that message during the postseason, this time with far more success. Marshall has asked his team that question in the locker room after all four of its NCAA tournament victories and after sloppy moments in practice – pretty much any time he sees a chance complacency might set in.

"Anytime he sees something he doesn't like, he'll pretty much say, "Are you satisfied?" senior guard Demetric Williams said. "'Are you going to start not caring just because you guys are happy to be here?' I think he's going to keep saying it until we hold the trophy up. As long as we have another game, we're going to keep saying that."

[Y! Sports Radio: Joe Theismann 'felt so bad' for Kevin Ware]

It would be understandable if a Wichita State team of castoffs and overlooked recruits was just happy to become the fifth team seeded ninth or higher to make a Final Four, but the ninth-seeded Shockers insist that's not the case.

Making jokes about Kevin Ware's gruesome leg injury last Sunday still falls under the "too soon" category. But writing Kevin Ware jokes for the Louisville forward to read on television? Well, his participation in the gallows humor makes it OK and it's exactly what David Letterman and his staff did for Thursday night's edition of the "Late Show" on CBS.

So how did Ware do in reading off the "top 10 things going through Kevin Ware's mind when he broke his leg?." Well, he still seems a bit shellshocked over all the attention his broken leg is garnering and his appearance via remote produced its usual bit of awkward delay moments with Dave. (That's something most of Dave's out-of-studio guests run into.)

[Related: NCAA tried to let Adidas cash in on injury]

But all in all, we think we did pretty well for a guy whose name was unknown to 99.9 percent of Americans one week ago. Maybe laughter really can be the best medicine.

Here's the transcribed top 10, complete with a few good lines and the prerequisite stinkers.

(AP)As we head into Final Four weekend, four possibilities remain for Monday's title game.

Of those, Louisville-Michigan is the matchup that was most often selected on Yahoo! Sports' Fantasy Tourney Pick'em. A lot of people also picked Louisville-Syracuse, which makes sense, given that the Cardinals entered the bracket as the top overall seed.

As for brackets that predicted No. 9-seed Wichita State to be playing in the tourney's final game? Well, there's not that many. In fact, there are less than 100 combined entries that predicted Wichita State would be playing either Michigan or Syracuse.

Here's the breakdown of all four possible Monday matchups:

1. Louisville-Michigan: 40,718 brackets (1.3 percent of 3 million+ entries)
2. Louisville-Syracuse: 31,046 brackets (1.0)
3. Wichita State-Michigan: 51 brackets (0.0016)
4. Wichita State-Syracuse: 39 brackets (0.0013)

Did you pick any of these matchups before the tourney started three weeks ago?

Ready for the Final Four?
Follow The Dagger on

Pernetti, who was integral in Rutgers' move to the Big 10, is out of a job some 24 hours after he fired Mike Rice, the head basketball coach who is the central figure of a video in which he shoves players, hurls basketballs at them and berates them with gay slurs.

Last November, Pernetti received a copy of the video and after an investigation decided in December to suspend Rice for three games, fined him $50,000 and ordered him to attend anger management classes.

"Accountability is a vital element of the Rutgers athletics family," Pernetti said at the time, "and it is imperative our head coaches act and lead in a responsible manner."

Tim Pernetti (Getty Images) The pressure for more of a reaction boiled over Tuesday when ESPN's 'Outside the Lines' aired portions of the 30-minute video. In it, Rice can be seen throwing basketballs at a player's head,