Month: March 2009

There have been some epic heavyweight bouts in the history of college basketball. Alcindor vs. Hayes in 1968 filled the Astrodome in Houston. Sampson vs. Ewing in 1982 introduced college basketball to cable television. Ewing beat Olajuwon for the 1984 national championship.

The latest titanic clash took place Sunday at FedExForum in Memphis with a berth in the 2009 Final Four at stake. Tyler Hansbrough’s North Carolina Tar Heels beat Blake Griffin’s Oklahoma Sooners, 72-60, to punch North Carolina the last ticket to next week’s Final Four in Detroit. (Presuming Griffin is honored with this year’s Naismith Award, the game was the first meeting between Naismith winners in a regional final since the award was first presented in 1969.) The Tar Heels will take on Villanova next Saturday in one national semifinal, while Connecticut squares off with Michigan State in the other. North Carolina — on its way to a record 18th Final Four — is the only returnee from 2008.

As for the Hansbrough-Griffin showdown, it had more depth in pregame analysis than it did once the ball was tipped. Griffin (23 points, 16 rebounds) won the box score, as Hansbrough was limited to eight points and six rebounds, but his Sooners never closed within eight points of the top-seeded Tar Heels after North Carolina raced out to a 13-2 start. That rarest of teams in modern college basketball, North Carolina starts five upper classmen and, according to Oklahoma coach Jeff Capel, “brings pros off the bench.”

Tar Heel coach Roy Williams used a troika of big men to guard Griffin after Hansbrough picked up two early fouls. Deon Thompson and a pair of freshmen — Ed Davis and Tyler Zeller — relied on teammates for double-teaming clamps that limited Griffin to 12 field-goal attempts (he made nine). Unlike in its victory Friday night over Syracuse, though, Oklahoma got little scoring support from the outside, missing 19 of 21 three-point attempts. (After making six treys against the Orange, Sooner guard Tony Crocker missed all five of his attempts from beyond the arc Sunday.)

“We held a team that averages 90 points to 72,” said Capel after the game. “We just didn’t make shots. [North Carolina] is known for being more efficient in the second half [when the Heels shot 62 percent], but it came down to our inability to make shots. I do think we were a little bit tight. Sometimes you can want something so much, and try so hard. We had a couple of wide-open shots, and we just missed. Then in the second half, we just could not get stops.”

North Carolina point guard Ty Lawson — owner of college basketball’s most famous big toe — led his team with 19 points in 36 minutes of playing time. He was named MVP of the South Regional. Senior guard Danny Green scored 12 points in the game’s first 14 minutes and finished with 18. The Heels managed to win by 12 points despite both Hansbrough and Wayne Ellington failing to reach double figures. Which said much about the kind of team Williams has constructed.

“It’s the way I recruit, it’s the way we try and run this program,” emphasized Williams after the game. “We aim to have more than one guy as the star. You have to have good balance inside and outside. Most of our guys know they’re not going to get 30 shots, but they also know they have a great chance to win.” Williams, already a Hall of Famer, is on his way to his seventh Final Four (his third at the helm of North Carolina). Williams admitted to spitting in the Mississippi River Sunday morning, a superstition he acts upon whenever playing in St. Louis, New Orleans, or Memphis.

On the subject of his most famous player, Williams wanted to clarify a contribution that may have been overlooked. “Tyler Hansbrough took four shots today,” he said, “but he was a beast defensively in the second half. Blake has got to get extra attention, so that’s what we gave him.” Hansbrough and Griffin joined Lawson on the all-regional team, along with Green and Syracuse’s Jonny Flynn.

“This has been a hard year,” said Williams, noting the rash of injuries that hit his team. “There were drills we’d run for eight minutes, and I’d think about stopping at six, because I hadn’t hurt anyone yet. But it’s always sweet when you’re playing on the last weekend of the season.”

North Carolina and Oklahoma — the top two seeds in the NCAA tournament’s South Regional — left little doubt in their semifinal games Friday night at FedExForum in downtown Memphis. With the Tar Heels’ 98-77 win over Gonzaga and the Sooners’ 84-71 victory over Syracuse, the country will get the matchup CBS wanted most: 2008 Player of the Year Tyler Hansbrough vs. (presumptive) 2009 Player of the Year Blake Griffin. Tip-off will be 4:05 pm central on Sunday.

— FedExForum was packed with an announced crowd of 17,103 guests from three of the country’s four time zones. Quadrants of the lower bowl were shaded distinctly with crimson, powder blue, orange, and red. Until the NBA’s Grizzlies return to the playoffs, this was the largest crowd the arena will see absent the Memphis Tigers.

A unique element to watching a regional semifinal with neutral combatants is that — despite the full house — the noise level remains modest. Because the crowd never cheers as one. For every play that lifts, say, the orange section, another section — on Friday night, crimson — stays in its collective seat. When the game is back and forth (which was rare in both contests Friday), the sound is the sports-arena equivalent of changing the balance of your stereo speakers. A roar from your left for one play … followed by screams from your right for another. It’s the kind of crowd that makes a wave impossible. Which, of course, is a virtue.

— Oklahoma’s star would be, to say the least, an asset to the Memphis Grizzlies. Already equipped with the body of an NBA power forward (6’10”, 250 pounds), Griffin seems to thrive on contact, even with the ball in his hands. He converted 12 of 15 field-goal attempts against the Orange for 30 points while grabbing 14 rebounds. He now has 488 rebounds for the season, the most by any NCAA player in 25 years. And the man hit his head on the backboard as he delivered a tomahawk dunk with three minutes to the play in the game. The 2010 NBA Rookie of the Year trophy is his to lose.

— Syracuse crosses up many of its Big East brethren with a 2-3 zone that seems anachronistic in the modern, man-up world of college basketball. Oklahoma exposed the zone with the most old-fashioned one-two punch in the game: outside shooting from Tony Crocker (who made six of 11 three-pointers on his way to a career-high 28 points) and the inside work of Griffin. After the game, coach Jeff Capel acknowledged that his team’s ball movement was critical against the zone defense. As for Crocker, he said simply, “They gave us lots of open spots to get our shots.”

— One of the most courageous performances of the night came from an athlete wearing a skirt. The Gonzaga cheerleader holding the ‘A’ card — part of a “ZAGS” routine — fell from the shoulders of her anchor during a timeout late in the first half. After an audible gasp from the crowd, she bounced up — smiling, mind you — and finished the cheer. She then ran off the floor to the baseline with the rest of her team. They make ’em tough in Spokane.

— I spoke briefly with CBS analyst Clark Kellogg on Thursday and asked him how point guard Ty Lawson’s toe injury might impact the Tar Heels. “A toe injury is nothing to snicker at,” said Kellogg. “Especially our big toe; that’s where all the weight goes. Lawson’s health is critical.” Having not so much as removed his sweatshirt during Thursday’s open practice, the ACC Player of the Year scored 15 points in the game’s first 15 minutes in staking North Carolina to a 10-point lead it would never relinquish. His coach, Roy Williams, said after-the-game soaking Lawson’s foot in ice water has been his greatest salve, and with tomorrow’s day of rest, the star point guard should be ready for more action Sunday.

— Basketball games are won and lost with scoring spurts. Oklahoma beat Syracuse with a 28-9 run over eight minutes that bridged halftime of their game. North Carolina put the Bulldogs under their heel with a 13-3 run to start the second half and another 9-0 run that wiped out Gonzaga’s own 12-2 spurt. If Griffin stays out of foul trouble and Lawson is healthy Sunday, it’s hard to envision either club suffering the kind of drought that allows an opponent’s game-winning spurt. All of which suggests the South Regional championship will be a clash to remember.

Tyler Hansbrough is an easy player to dislike if you don’t wear Carolina blue. The animated body language, the facial contortions, the “Psycho T” eyes. But he’s been great for college basketball. Earlier this month, Hansbrough became the first player since an acclaimed trio that played a quarter-century ago (Oklahoma’s Wayman Tisdale, Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing, and Memphis State’s Keith Lee) to earn first-team All-America honors by the USBWA three consecutive years. The achievement says as much about the rarity of college stars staying in school these days as it does about Hansbrough’s singular talent. But a rare breed is a rare breed, however the qualifiers might apply. He had an unceremonious 24 points and 10 rebounds Friday night.

— Griffin was asked after his game if a potential matchup with Hansbrough would be added motivation. “I’m not going to get into a personal battle with Tyler Hansbrough,” he responded. “I have no beef with him. If we do play them, it’s not going to be him against me. It’s going to be Oklahoma against North Carolina.”

— One stat to consider between now and Sunday afternoon: Oklahoma is now 11-0 this season against nonconference opponents with 20 wins.

There are nights you simply
have to bow to the basketball gods. When your opponent is banking in shots from
the three-point arc and draining 65-foot buzzer beaters, those gods are
screaming at you. Such was the firestorm in which the Memphis Tigers’ dreams of
a national championship died Thursday night in Glendale, Arizona. The 102-91
defeat at the claws of another pack of Tigers — this one from Missouri — meant
the end of a school-record 27-game winning streak and the close of the most
successful four-year run in NCAA history.

“Last
year, there were three teams that had a legitimate chance at winning it all,”
said Memphis coach John Calipari two weeks ago during the Conference USA
tournament. “This year, there are at least eight. And there may be 16 with a
chance to get to the Final Four.” The sad truth for Calipari to reflect upon
over an offseason that will be longer than expected is that his team lost to a
club that perfected the style he preaches. Frenetic, fast, full-court, speed,
quickness, and relentless pursuit of the basketball on defense . . . that was
the third-seeded Missouri Tigers Thursday night. The style led to a point total
that was 23 higher than the most Memphis allowed in any other game this season.
(Had Vegas given Memphis 91 points over 40 minutes — against the Boston Celtics
— how many would have taken the odds for victory?) The style made a star out of
Missouri’s junior guard J.T. Tiller who entered the game averaging 8.0 points
but slashed-and-dashed his way to 23. Missouri shot 53 percent against a team
that typically doesn’t allow 40 percent. Were it not for a valiant fight over 14
minutes of the second half — Memphis closed a 24-point deficit to six — the
final score would have been far uglier, and it would have left a final
impression for a team that deserves better.

Before we consider what the
2008-09 Memphis Tigers didn’t do, we need to reflect on what they weren’t
supposed to do. After losing Derrick Rose — the top selection in last year’s NBA
draft — Memphis shouldn’t have won 30 games a fourth season in a row. After
losing All-American Chris Douglas-Roberts to the pros, they shouldn’t have run
off a 25-game winning streak the third season in a row. After losing Joey Dorsey
— the program’s second-most prolific rebounder — they shouldn’t have climbed to
number-three in the country and a second seed in the NCAA tournament.

Fact is, the 2008-09 Memphis
Tigers are the most overachieving team seen in these parts in decades . . . and
that’s meant entirely as a compliment. Less talented than the three 30-win clubs
that preceded it, this year’s squad was the hardest working of any Calipari has
suited up in his nine years at the U of M helm. Led by a pair of seniors —
Antonio Anderson and Robert Dozier — who knew only winning, the Tigers (our
Tigers) made the victories seem routine. Fans take victories as routine at their
own peril. Lesson learned in the Arizona desert.

The saddest part of the
Memphis loss, certainly, was witnessing the culmination of Anderson’s and
Dozier’s career. They were the constant over this brilliant four-year stretch,
one that saw Shawne Williams, Rose, and presumably Tyreke Evans (a season-high
33 points against Missouri) seize more spotlight as one-year wonders. Dozier
never played better than he did in his finale, with 19 points and 16 rebounds.
Alas, Anderson (six turnovers, five missed free throws) has had many better
nights. Fouling out as the game wound down, Anderson left college basketball as
he should have: on his shield. The new banner in the rafters of FedExForum
honoring these warriors will feature the number 137, a four-year NCAA-record win
total that should last at least until their kids are playing on scholarship.

What to expect in year 10 of
the Calipari era? On their way to Memphis are Xavier Henry and DeMarcus Cousins,
two of the top five recruits in the country (and yes, two more players who may
well be “one and done” as college players). They’ll be counted upon to offset
the losses of Dozier, Anderson, Evans, and perhaps junior Shawn Taggart (who
graduates this spring and may have found his way into the draft’s second round
with his stellar play over the last month). Roburt Sallie should be back, his
shooting now central to the team’s scoring options beyond the freshman arrivals.
Perhaps Willie Kemp will find himself and the role he once played. The largest
void next season will be leadership. Having played three years at the side of
Anderson and Dozier, Kemp is the most capable of helping fill that void.

Winners are selfish. They
become entitled, in their eyes, to the glory that closes a campaign. For the
2008-09 Memphis Tigers, glory must be found in the campaign itself, in a body of
work that was as unexpected as it was brilliant.