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Sunday, March 11, 2007
Gators should cut Dome’s nets again
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The 20th annual Final Four Fiasco begins with a caveat: At least 15 teams have a legitimate shot to reach the Georgia Dome, and a half-dozen have a realistic chance of bearing a national championship away from this city. Kansas could win it all. North Carolina could win it all. Georgetown could win it all. If Kevin Durant blows up, Texas could win it all. That said …
The team most apt to win in Atlanta is the team that won in Indianapolis 12 months ago. In a tournament where there’s no room for error, Florida is least likely to slip. Florida has a blend of talent and seasoning and belief nobody else does. That said …
The Gators got a bad break Sunday. They were seeded No. 1 overall, which is a signal honor, but imagine the motivation they’d have derived from a No. 2 seed, which a lot of smart folks thought they’d be. “We’re defending champs and we win our conference regular season and our league tournament and we’re only a No. 2? No respect! We’ll show you!”That said …
They’ll show us anyway.
The Gators got placed in the softest regional. Beyond Florida, the Midwest is so unassuming that a No. 10 seed — that’d be Georgia Tech, last seen yielding 114 points to Wake Forest — will reach the Elite Eight. The Jackets figure to have a tougher time against UNLV, coached by the former Atlantan Lon Kruger, in Round 1 than against Wisconsin in Round 2. Essentially the same Badgers were blown out last March by an Arizona team that had had a down season but was still loaded with talent. For all its foibles, Tech is loaded with talent.
The Jackets can beat Oregon in the regional semi, but they can’t beat Florida anywhere anytime. Nobody in the Midwest can. Arizona doesn’t have the heart. Maryland doesn’t have the players. Notre Dame will lose to Winthrop. Butler, the famous upsetter, will itself be upset by Old Dominion.
The temptation is great to pick against Kansas in the West simply because I’ve picked Kansas and been wrong so often. But I really can’t do it in good conscience because I’ve come to believe the Jayhawks are the second-best team in the land. They defend nearly as hard as UCLA, which they’ll face in the regional final, and they have more good players.
The rest of the West is about guards. Virginia Tech has Zabian Dowdell and Jamon Gordon and will win twice. Virginia Commonwealth, which chased down George Mason in the final two minutes of the Colonial final, has better guards than Duke — yes, you read that correctly — and will win twice. Gonzaga will beat Indiana because the ‘Zags have Derek Raivio. Villanova will beat Kentucky because the ‘Cats don’t have a guard capable of controlling tournament-type games.
I stopped liking North Carolina as a national champ the night I saw Georgia Tech run through them. The Heels got away with defending only occasionally in 2005, but this team, while nearly as talented, isn’t as seasoned. Carolina figures to have a tough fight in Rounds 2 (Marquette) and 3 (Texas), and by the time the Heels get to the regional final they’ll be gassed.
Georgetown is one of the strongest No. 2 seeds in memory. It has size and balance and the usual complement of Hoya ferocity. Not many squads ever overpower Pitt, but Georgetown did Saturday night. No team in the bottom half of the East bracket — not Washington State, not Texas Tech (which will beat Boston College) and not Vanderbilt (which will lose to George Washington) — will touch the Hoyas.
Ohio State will enter the tournament ranked No. 1 in the polls if not by the NCAA committee, but somehow the Buckeyes don’t have the look of a national champ. They’re big and quick and strong and deep, but they’re also young. Their two best players are freshmen, and while it’s possible to win it all with freshmen leading a team — Syracuse did it in 2003 — it’s also a harder way to go.
The guess here is that the South will spawn a slew of upsets — Albany over Virginia, Long Beach State over Tennessee, Nevada over Memphis in Round 2 — and the regional winner will be the lowest seed to reach Atlanta. As good as Mike Conley Jr., Ohio State’s freshman point guard, can be, Texas A&M’s Acie Law IV already is. And how would you like it, as the No. 1 team in both polls, being forced to play a regional final against the barbed-wire Aggies in San Antonio?
Once here, Georgetown will beat Texas A&M in a salty semifinal and Florida will take down Kansas in one of the greatest tournament games ever. And then the Gators will fulfill their manifest destiny and become the first repeat champ in 15 years and only the second in 34. It takes something special to win once, far more to do it again. The Gators are a team for the ages, and this is their time.
Permalink | Comments (47) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Tar Heels’ Williams can’t help looking ahead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Tampa — Sometimes tradition isn’t enough. Really, nothing against lore and pageantry and all that is associated with the ACC tournament. Nothing against the schools, the players, the “blue-haired old ladies,” as the North Carolina coach so aptly put it Sunday.
But what will they say if the Tar Heels go splat now in the only tournament that really counts?
Two years ago, Roy Williams’ top-seeded team got bounced by Georgia Tech in its second ACC tournament game. Then Carolina won the national championship. Maybe I missed it, but did anybody say, “There goes Roy Williams. He can’t win the semi-big one”?
Well, now they can’t even say that. Williams finally won the semi-big one. The Heels hadn’t won an ACC tournament since 1998, more than covering Williams’ four-year tenure. But they survived Sunday’s final against a North Carolina State team that has been channeling its implausible past all week.
Carolina won, 89-80. It collected a nice trophy. That’s nice. But if you think that satisfies Williams, you didn’t watch him this week.
You didn’t see him bench his senior point guard, Reyshawn Terry, for seven minutes in the second half Sunday for what he perceived as uninspired play.
You didn’t see him pound the scorer’s table Saturday because his team — leading Boston College by 16 points — almost had a second straight shot-clock violation.
You didn’t hear him Sunday. It wasn’t about this tournament. It’s about the next tournament.
“We won nine conference championships at Kansas in the regular season,” Williams said. “We won four or five Big 12, Big 8 tournaments. And what was I called when I got back? Still, ‘The coach who hasn’t won the big one.’
“Let’s be honest. I feel great about this. But this does not compare to winning the national championship. If those blue-haired old ladies start writing me notes again, they’ve just got to live with it. It’s a wonderful weekend for everybody. But let’s not get carried away.”
Imagine that. The coach who couldn’t win the big one only cares about the big one. Nobody should have doubted Williams’ greatness before. His prioritizing merely reaffirms it.
Williams returned to his alma mater in 2003. Fans hoped he would resuscitate a program that had ceased winning championships and briefly, under Matt Doherty, turned into an embarrassment.
He brought the Heels back to the elite. Carolina won it all in his second season. Despite losing seven of eight starters, Carolina reached the second round last year.
There is little reason to believe they can’t surpass that this year. The team is loaded with talent, as always, and has a coach who seems to know what buttons to push. Ask Terry. When he came back in the game, Carolina’s lead was down to a point, 70-69. Having stewed on the bench, the senior came back and scored the Tar Heels’ next eight points in a span of 1:23.
“He’s always pushing me,” Terry said, “and I don’t mind that at all.”
What Terry does mind is any criticism he hears of his coach.
“This was just another great achievement for him,” he said. “I’m sure he was tired of people saying things, like he can’t win the NCAA championship, or he can’t win the ACC. Well, what can they say now? He’s won everything there is to win. The only thing for him to do now is add to it all and win it again. This is just more jewelry for his jewelry box.”
As his team’s lead was shrinking in the final minutes Sunday, Williams called a time out. “I told them I wasn’t concerned about State making a run,” he said. “I told them winning championships is not supposed to be easy. You don’t get there by the other team playing dead.”
Carolina got there in the semi-big one Sunday. Williams likes his team’s chances to get there again, this time in the one that really counts. He likes their talent, their poise, the fact they’ve been tested.
“I hope they enjoyed that,” he said. “I hope they like the feeling of cutting down nets and getting trophies.”
Because now is when it really starts.
Permalink | Comments (18) | Categories: Final Four, Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Gators find joy in living in moment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
There was no charity in their play — the Florida Gators never trailed in the SEC tournament and won three games by an average of 19.7 points — but there was humility in their response. They celebrated hard Sunday, Joakim Noah doing a midcourt dance that ended with him flinging his official championship cap on high, and they took pains to cut down the nets.
When last the SEC tournament was staged on the same floor as the upcoming Final Four, the Kentucky Wildcats chose to leave the nets unclaimed. The year was 2003 and the site was the Louisiana Superdome and the Big Blue’s haughty stance was that it didn’t want to cut two sets of nets. As it happened, Kentucky never made it back to New Orleans, running a foul of Dwyane Wade and Marquette in the regional final.
Yet another thing to like about these Gators: They’re not afraid to get giddy. One by one, they filed into the Georgia Dome stands to hug their parents — MVP Al Horford even left his trophy with his mother — and they acted, of all things, like a bunch of college students. They’ve won three SEC tournaments in a row and could well take consecutive NCAA titles, but they haven’t gotten so consumed by the destination that they’ve ignored the journey.
“As soon as we have an opportunity to cut the nets, we’re going to get them,” said Noah, and indeed this was the second bunch the Gators have claimed. They held a net-cutting after they beat South Carolina in Gainesville last month to clinch the SEC regular-season title, and Noah conceded the jubilation might have spawned a hangover. The Gators lost their next two games, but they don’t look like they’re about to lose again.
More Noah: “We have a swagger, but you have to stay humble. We’re not taking anything for granted. … We’re almost a little scared.”
That’s scared in a good way, scared as opposed to overconfident. (See Kentucky 2003 for an example of the latter.) Having absorbed the concept of the “precious present” from his mentor Rick Pitino, Billy Donovan keeps hammering his players with it. Said Noah: “We make fun of him. He’s always saying, ‘Live in the moment, live in the moment.’ “
This season could have been a long, hard slog. Repeating isn’t easy because the would-be repeater becomes a target. Every flaw, real or perceived, becomes a Talking Point coast-to-coast. “Just because people think you’re supposed to win,” Noah said, “that doesn’t mean anything.”
Said Donovan: “I’ve seen teams with high expectations that had the joy taken out of them.”
The Florida joy is intact. The Gators dispatched Arkansas with their standard focused fury. Four of them wound up on the all-tournament team. (Angered by the single omission, Florida fans chanted, “We want Lee [Humphrey].” Said Taurean Green, the point guard: “We’re enjoying this moment. We’re living in this moment. We’re enjoying this team.”
We all should. Not since Michigan’s Fab Five has there been such an enjoyable college crew. (The Fabs’ reputation has been tarnished in hindsight, but while they were playing they were an absolute treat.) Florida plays the game the right way and has a blast doing it. Florida shares the ball and defends with a purpose and leaves vanquished opponents gushing in admiration.
“This team has been humbled in a number of ways,” Donovan said. “No team in the country can rely on talent — you have to be on that edge of being nervous.”
Florida has that edge. Florida has the talent. Florida has everything it takes to cut down the nets in this city on the night of April 2. But the Gators, bless ‘em, weren’t prepared to wait that long. On Selection Sunday, they snipped away.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
