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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > March > 23
Sunday, March 23, 2008
It’s called Madness for a reason
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Birmingham — What can we say about an NCAA tournament that still includes as many No. 12 seeds as No. 2’s? How do we account for the Sun Belt having as many teams remaining as either the ACC or the SEC? How can we describe a Big Dance that twirls onward without Coach K but with Stephen Curry and Courtney Lee?
That such craziness, coming after a year in which favorites held swaggering sway, is more like it?
Well … yeah.
“Tennessee is one of the top teams in the country,” Butler coach Brad Stevens said here Sunday. “And we took them to overtime. And we shot 36 percent.”
We don’t set our calendars to March Sameness. It’s called Madness for a reason, and there was little of that in 2007. The lowest seed to reach the Sweet 16 was UNLV, a No. 7. This year there’s a No. 7 (West Virginia), a No. 10 (Davidson) and two No. 12’s (Western Kentucky and Villanova). UCLA, the choice of many, if not most, to win it all, was lucky to survive Texas A&M in Anaheim on Saturday, and one day later the board was nearly swept clean of No. 2’s.
Duke lost Saturday. Georgetown lost Sunday. Texas barely held off Miami. And Tennessee, ranked No. 1 in the polls at the end of February and still No. 1 in the RPI, was forced to work five extra minutes to subdue Butler, a Brand Name Underdog that didn’t play very well.
These were the Vols’ final two possessions of regulation: J.P. Prince threw the ball out of bounds, and then he walked. And why, you might be asking, was J.P. Prince on the floor playing point guard, a position he’d barely manned all season, for a No. 2 seed in the 40th minute in the second round of the Big Dance? Because Bruce Pearl, the Vols’ overstated coach, decided to tinker after the SEC tournament.
“The point guard play we were getting wasn’t going to win a national championship,” Pearl said, and the point guard play — Prince had more turnovers (six) than assists (five) — the Vols got against Butler almost kept them from the Sweet 16. Pearl again, trying to convince himself: “What happened totally gives us a better chance to advance.”
He wasn’t saying the same thing in the moments between regulation and OT. Instead, Pearl said, he told his men this: “J.P. and I did not close out regulation well — bail me out.”
The Vols outlasted Butler because Tyler Smith blocked an A.J. Graves layup inside the final minute — “I don’t know if I caught it on the way up or the way down,” Smith said, and it was close — and because Graves and Mike Green, the senior guards who’d led the Bulldogs to heights unknown picked the worst day possible to miss 27-of-37 shots between them.
“It was just me and the rim,” said Green, who missed eight shots inside five feet, “and I failed to finish.”
It’s hard to imagine Tennessee beating anyone remaining in the East Regional with such a performance, but the lesson of March Madness is that there are no lessons. This isn’t the BCS: There are no style points in this event, and this week’s shaky winner could be next week’s power player.
Still, the temptation to re-handicap the field is too powerful to resist. Any of the four remaining teams — Memphis, Texas, Stanford and Michigan State — could win the South Regional without it seeming an upset, but it’s hard to imagine any squad but Kansas prevailing in the Midwest. Or any team winning the West except UCLA, even after its scare.
The glamour region is the East, the only one that has seen its four top seeds advance. Louisville is playing too well for Tennessee, and North Carolina was clearly the class of the first weekend. Still, the Heels will have to fight past plodding Washington State on Thursday and probably Louisville on Saturday, and the Cards have the depth and the talent to give Carolina a run. But nobody is apt to unhorse the Heels before the Final Four, if then.
We learned again this weekend that just about anything can happen in March. Even with all the undulations, the championship will come down to UCLA against Carolina. Unless Western Kentucky pulls a Texas Western. Unless Davidson pulls a Villanova. Unless Villanova pulls another Villanova.
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