How sweet it is
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports Mar 17, 12:42 am EDT
Here’s your NCAA tournament Sweet 16 primer of random news, notes, quotes, opinions and nonsense to prep you for the wildest three weeks on the American sports calendar.
Last month, when Memphis still was unbeaten and ranked No. 1 in the country, John Calipari, always looking for an angle, joked about how the NCAA selection committee might try to stop him and his nontraditional power.
Would they send the Tigers to the Midwest but make Michigan State the No. 4 seed – allowing 50,000 or so Spartan fans to crowd Ford Field in Detroit? Would they somehow make them a two seed and send them to play North Carolina in Charlotte?
“We’re going to Houston, and Texas will be the No. 2,” he predicted, adding that he didn’t care, although he did note that in 2007 the Tigers had to beat Texas A&M in San Antonio.
Well, what do you know, old Cal got his conspiracy theory to come true.
If it comes to it, Memphis’ road to the Final Four might have to go through Texas … deep in the heart of Texas.
Memphis coach John Calipari.
Cal isn’t actually all that upset. In terms of geography, Houston was as close to Memphis as was possible. And you have to play someone good. But still, Texas in Houston?
The NCAA makes a point of “rewarding” teams who have great seasons. This sounds good on principle, but when you are “rewarding” one team you are punishing someone else.
This year, the most obvious “reward” was the tournament’s top seed, North Carolina, which is staring at first- and second-round games in Raleigh and third and fourth rounds in Charlotte. The Heels don’t have to leave the state – or partisan crowds – to make the Final Four.
So you have to wonder what second-seeded Tennessee did to get that deal? The Volunteers merely went 29-4 and were considered the best of the second seeds, yet they wound up playing the best of the top seeds?
“What we try to do is we try to balance the top four lines and not necessarily the two top lines,” committee chairman Tom O’Connor said. “But geographically it made sense to send Tennessee to Charlotte.”
Yes, Charlotte is just a four-hour drive from Knoxville, so plenty of orange ought to show up. But that isn’t the same as being in-state, where all those Carolina alums in the Charlotte area can commute from home. The crowd will be for the Heels.
Regardless, if giving North Carolina in-state games is considered a reward – same for UCLA getting the first two rounds in nearby Anaheim – then why did a two-seed, Texas, get the same benefit? The Longhorns went 28-6 but seemed to be given an advantage over 33-1 Memphis.
All just a coincidence or is it another example of the NCAA helping traditional powers from blue-blood leagues?
No one knows. And while Calipari will say publicly he isn’t bothered, you know it’s one more “us against the world” motivational trick he’s going to use on his team.
On the morning of Feb. 4, Coppin State was 2-19 against Division I competition and 0-8 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. That is practically the definition of finished. But Fang’s Gang (coach Fang Mitchell) won 12 of its final 13 games – including four in the conference tournament – and now they head to the NCAA tournament, albeit a Tuesday play-in game in Dayton, Ohio, against Mount St. Mary’s.
“We were life and death,” Mitchell said.
Or life after death.
NBA scouts generally don’t spend a lot of time in Omaha, Neb., but they’ll be tripping over each other Thursday when Southern California and Kansas State match up.
The Wildcats boast the nation’s best player, forward Michael Beasley. The Trojans have one of the best point guards, O.J. Mayo. Both are freshmen but neither is expected to return to college after serving their David Stern-mandated year of NCAA purgatory.
Beasley, a gifted forward, is almost assuredly going to be the No. 1 pick in June. He averaged 26.5 points and 12.5 rebounds a game and recorded a double-double in 26 of K-State’s 31 games.
Mayo wasn’t as consistently strong, but he can be a big-time performer and brought great excitement to the Trojan program that long has played in the local shadow of UCLA. Toss in Kansas’ Darrell Arthur and Brandon Rush, who also will be there, and this is a lottery team’s dream subregional.
This is the second NCAA tournament since the NBA’s age limit sent top players to school for one year.
In the 69-year history of this event, we’ve gone through various stretches involving freshmen. There was a time they were ineligible. There was a time when if they did star, it was a shock. Then there was the Fab Five era, when they started to assert themselves. Then the best never showed up on campus – LeBron James and friends.
Memphis guard Derrick Rose.
The result was a draining of the college talent pool. The action may have been as exciting, but the games weren’t as well played. Then Stern said everyone needs to go back to school for a year, and we had last season – when a freshman-dominated team at Ohio State reached the championship game.
Once again, freshmen often are the most talented players in the game. There are some upper-class exceptions, but there is no denying the rookies’ impact.
The key for a team to ride a freshman deep in the tournament, however, is getting everyone on the team to realize that. At Ohio State last year there weren’t any seniors who thought they were better than Greg Oden. It was the same with Syracuse in 2003, when Carmelo Anthony led the way to the title.
Memphis’ only loss this season came when a senior, Antonio Anderson, missed a critical late-possession shot while freshman Derrick Rose never touched the ball. That can’t happen again. The older players have to defer to the best player.
Even way back in 1982, Dean Smith had a freshman named Michael Jordan take (and hit) what would be the game-winning shot of the NCAA title game.
It seems obvious now – give Jordan the ball. But it wasn’t then. Except to Smith, of course, who it turns out was a couple of decades ahead of the game.
Toughest omission from the tournament?
None. The truth is, this was a down season for college basketball, and if you couldn’t get yourself into the NCAA tournament you blew it on multiple occasions. There weren’t 34 worthy at-large teams. All the self-serving talk by coaches about expanding the NCAA tournament should, this year at least, be replaced by contracting it.
But if there has to be one selection, it’s got to be tough for Arizona State to watch arch-rival Arizona get a bid over it when the Sun Devils beat the Wildcats twice this season.
UCLA coach Ben Howland cuts the net following the Bruins’ win over Stanford in the Pac-10 championship on Saturday.
Best Coach: Ben Howland
Best Mid-major Coach: Bob McKillop
Worst Coach: Ernie Kent
Best Chant: Austin Peay (“Let’s Go Peay”)
Best School: Stanford (I wasn’t smart enough to get in there, but I am smart enough to kiss up to Jerry Yang, who was.)
Toughest mascot (if there was a fight, who would win?): Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils. They’d steal your soul.
Meekest mascot: Austin Peay Governors. As Eliot Spitzer has shown us, governors are lovers, not fighters.
Toughest coach (if there was a fight, which coach would win?):
The contenders: Bruce Pearl (ripped), Mike Krzyzewski (West Point grad), Bob Huggins (brawler), Tom Izzo (scrapper), Frank Martin (once worked as a bouncer).
Winner: Fang Mitchell. You want to fight a dude from Baltimore named Fang?
Billy Packer made it through the selection show without making any wild comments or accusations. Maybe he’s waiting for Monday to drop what seems to be his annual “look at me” controversy that isn’t. Whether it is dressing down the selection committee chair, railing against mid-majors or being confused by the RPI, it’s usually a rite of spring. It just didn’t feel like a selection show without it.
Of course, he may have been comatose after calling a weekend of Big Ten “action.” Those 47-43 games can do that to you.
At least Clark Kellogg continued his tradition of selecting all the No. 1s to advance to the Final Four. This never has happened in the tournament (the closest was 1993 when three No. 1s and a No. 2 made it). Picking the No. 1s isn’t much for insight, analysis or entertainment, but at least Kellogg is consistent.
That said, if you’re filling out your brackets, don’t get crazy with the Cinderellas. They rarely last past the second round.
Only three times has a team seeded worse than No. 8 reached the Final Four (Penn in 1979, LSU in 1986 and George Mason in 2006) and only three times has someone worse than a No. 4 won the NCAA title (N.C. State in 1983, Villanova in 1985 and Kansas in 1988).
By the second weekend, it’s mostly all about the heavyweight programs.
There are 341 teams in 49 states (no Alaska) playing Division I basketball, a diversity like no other sport. The bright lights of television focus on some of those teams, but most are covered almost exclusively by the local newspaper beat reporters, often at small papers in these small college towns.
Winthrop’s Michael Jenkins attempts to block Pierre-Marie Altidor Cespedes during their OT loss to Marshall in January.
So if you think it’s difficult for the coaches and players to jet across the country on a charter flight to play in the NCAA tournament, or even reporters at major metropolitan dailies, who have to fly commercial, imagine what it’s like for the writers at the papers who don’t have the budget for expensive last-second flights?
On a shoestring budget, many do whatever it takes to get to the games and get the news back to the local fans.
Consider last year when Winthrop, located in little Rock Hill, S.C., was sent to Spokane, Wash., to play Notre Dame. Stuck with no easy or affordable way to get to the Pacific Northwest, two reporters at the Rock Hill Herald – Gary McCann and Andrew Dys – got in their car and drove. After two days and 2,700 miles, they made it, proof this was a pursuit of passion as much as profession.
Then Winthrop sprung the upset, and they wrote the heck out of the story, giving everyone back home more than their 50 cents worth.
So what about this year? Winthrop is back in the tourney for the eighth time in 10 years. Did the Eagles – or the Herald reporters – catch a break and get sent nearby to Raleigh, N.C., or Birmingham, Ala.?
Try Denver. Good luck with the gas prices; hope the readers of Rock Hill appreciate it.
Hoosier Daddy
Conceivably Indiana’s interim coach Dan Dakich could get the Hoosiers back to midseason form and push them to a Final Four. It’s not like the talent isn’t there with D.J. White and Eric Gordon. If he did, he might be named the full-time coach.
But ever since coach Kelvin Sampson resigned following an NCAA violations investigation, IU mostly has fallen apart. That means one of the game’s most storied and fervently followed programs probably will be more obsessed this March about hiring a new coach than about the actual games.
It’s not so different from a year ago at Kentucky. The Wildcats’ parting with Tubby Smith and pursuit of Florida’s Billy Donovan (they wound up with Texas A&M’s Billy Gillispie) was one of the chief story lines of the tournament.
As for Indiana, any number of future head coaches could be in this tournament. The short list includes Notre Dame’s Mike Brey, Xavier’s Sean Miller, Washington State’s Tony Bennett, Vanderbilt’s Kevin Stallings and Marquette’s Tom Crean.
Indiana’s combination of local talent, tradition and ambition – and its brand new practice facility – makes it one of the most coveted jobs in the country. The downside, however, is that coaches are very concerned about going to work for such a dysfunctional administration.
(And no matter how much Dick Vitale blathers about it, Bob Knight is not getting the job.)
Double-digit seeds that can do some damage:
South Alabama (10 in the East)
Davidson (10 in the Midwest)
St. Mary’s (10 in the South)
Western Kentucky (12 in the West)
Oral Roberts (13 in the South)
Higher-seeded teams to wonder about:
Michigan State (5 in the South): Struggled mightily on offense away from East Lansing.
Vanderbilt (4 in the Midwest): A much better team at home than on the road (just 2-6 in league play away from Nashville).
Duke (2 in the West): Still susceptible to quick guards; may not face any early, though.
Pitt (4 in the South): A team built to win the Big East, which it just did, but after winning four games in four days, might be a bit spent for Thursday all the way out in the altitude of Denver.
Five years ago Baylor went through perhaps the most disturbing scandal in the history of college athletics.
Baylor head coach Scott Drew.
Carlton Dotson, a Bears player, shot and killed his teammate, Patrick Dennehy, and then hid the body. As police investigated, Baylor coach Dave Bliss, in an effort to cover up illegal payments he was making to players, told his staff to tell investigators Dotson was a drug dealer and that is why he was flush with cash.
When the entire story came out, Baylor rightfully was humiliated nationally. Dotson was sentenced to 35 years in prison, Bliss resigned in disgrace and the NCAA put the school on probation through 2010. There were plenty of calls to disband the program, at least temporarily.
Instead Baylor hired Scott Drew, an energetic and optimistic coach at Valparaiso, where his father, Homer, (coach) and brother Bryce (player) once combined on one of the greatest buzzer beaters in tourney history.
Slowly Drew rebuilt the program, getting better players, overcoming one year when it was banned from nonconference games and forever selling the positives of the Baptist school in Waco, Texas.
On Sunday, Baylor was given an 11th seed in the tournament, the last school called, setting off a frenzied and emotional celebration. That’s a hell of a five-year journey.
Mid-major coaches who can use the next couple of weeks to get noticed
Keno Davis, Drake
Brad Stevens, Butler
Steve Donahue, Cornell
Billy Grier, San Diego
Scott Sutton, Oral Roberts
Coach dealing with the most pressure: Bill Self of Kansas.
There is a lot of pressure on all the coaches in the NCAA tournament. This is the time of year they justify their monster salaries.
But no one is under the gun to not just win, but win big, more than Bill Self. He has been a March roller coaster through the years. He took Tulsa to the Elite Eight in 2000. He put together a number of national contenders at Illinois but fell short of the Final Four. Since arriving at Kansas he has recruited and coached some powerhouse teams only to lose twice in the Elite Eight and twice in major first-round upsets to Bucknell and Bradley.
Self again has a team capable of winning the national championship. The Jayhawks have size, speed, skill and experience. At 31-3 and fresh off the Big 12 tournament championship, they appear to be getting better and better.
It’s not that Self’s job is, in any way, on the line. And while making the Final Four, if not beyond, is a combination of talent and luck, the fact remains there isn’t another coach in the tournament who needs a big-time run more than him.
The picks.
The Final Four is: Tennessee, Southern California, Memphis and UCLA.
The champion is UCLA, which in reaching its third consecutive Final Four under coach Ben Howland uses a combination of creative offense and suffocating defense to deliver a 12th national championship to Westwood.
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports national columnist and the co-author of Glory Road, the story of coach Don Haskins and the history-making 1966 Texas Western Miners.
