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March 2007
Trading Dye was Braves’ second-worst move
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Early during the 1997 season, I was in New York a few weeks after the Braves’ Designated Geniuses made the second-worst trade in their Atlanta history (David Justice was the worst). Anyway, there was Barry Bonds, pulling me aside in the visitors’ clubhouse at Shea Stadium and asking a question with wide eyes.
“So what the heck were they thinking when they got rid of the next Dave Winfield?” said Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger, referring to Jermaine Dye, shipped to Kansas City for Michael Tucker and Keith Lockhart, neither going to the Hall of Fame soon.
The next Dave Winfield has evolved into the splendid Jermaine Dye, and that’s been enough to make the Braves’ DGs look even sillier. Take Saturday, for instance, when Dye hinted at Turner Field of remaining among baseball’s elite. During the final spring game for his Chicago White Sox, he went 2-for-2 with an RBI to end the exhibition season hitting .361. Not bad. The same goes for his exploits last year that had the Players Choice Awards naming Dye the American League’s Outstanding Player (.315 batting average, 44 home runs, and 120 RBIs, along with his stellar fielding and throwing in right field).
All of that was after Dye helped the 2005 White Sox win their first world championship in 88 years. He became the most valuable player of that World Series after going 7-for-16 (.438) with a home run and three RBIs during a sweep of the Houston Astros.
But the Braves’ DGs didn’t want him, and get this: During Dye’s first and only season with the Braves in 1996, he resembled, well, the next Dave Winfield.
Or another Andruw Jones.
Said Marquis Grissom, the Braves’ center fielder when Jones and Dye came along back then, “You look at what those two guys did at an early age and at how they played the game, how they weren’t scared, and you look at the fact that Dye was 6-foot-5, could swing the bat, could run and had one of the top arms in the game with accuracy.” Then Grissom paused, before adding with a sigh, “Everybody knows that dude can hit in a wheelchair, man. Why trade somebody like that?”
You don’t. Remember, too, Dye finished his 98 games with the Braves that season batting .281 with 12 home runs, 37 RBIs and a shiny future, heavily illuminated by Grissom.
The relationship between mentor and pupil was so close that Dye accepted an invitation to move into the Fayetteville home of Grissom and his family. The mentor even gave the pupil a curfew of midnight, which Grissom said Dye violated. “He was just like any other kid. A little giddy, wanting to go out there and experience life, but he listened,” said Grissom, now retired and living in his native Atlanta. “He was well-behaved, but he needed a little more toughness. As the years went on, he went out there on the field and did get a little tougher.”
There were several trips to the disabled list, though. The worst came in the 2001 playoffs when Dye broke his leg while playing for the Oakland Athletics after he was dealt from Kansas City. There also were three more injury-plagued seasons after that for Dye in Oakland. Then the White Sox sealed their destiny for winning it all by signing Dye to a free-agent contract before the 2005 season.
Just think. That season, along with the eight before it and the ones afterward, could have featured Dye in a brilliant outfield with Jones and whoever else.
“I mean, I was a rookie back then, so I didn’t know what getting traded really was about,” said Dye, 33, famously quiet, who now shares a home with a wife and three kids instead of a mentor. “My thought process was to just go over there [to Kansas City] and do what I can do. When you’re that young, you don’t realize baseball is just a business. Things happen.”
Yeah, but some things shouldn’t happen, especially when it entails dealing goodness that has a chance for greatness.
Permalink | Comments (103) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Smart Oden ready for NBA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
If Greg Oden decides one year of college is enough and the NBA gets its next great center in the coming months, Ohio State should still consider itself lucky and the rest of us should consider ourselves, well, safer.
I’m having this recurring vision. It involves a 7-foot, 280-pound man with a surgical mask, walking toward me, holding up a drill, asking me to say, “aah.”
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four page“I like dentistry,” Oden said Friday. “I just went to the dentist. It was nice.”
It turns out that the Ohio State center has an affinity for something other than blocked shots, layups and looking down on opponents and saying, “Hey, little man.” He loves going to the dentist. He wanted to be one. Whether there exists a mouth that could fit around Oden’s hand is another matter.
Dentist?
“I don’t know why, I really don’t,” he said. “It’s very relaxing in the chair. You just lay back.”
Dissecting somebody’s bicuspids might not rank high on an NBA scout’s list of desires for a center, relative to, say, knocking out somebody’s bicuspids. But it was refreshing to hear a 19-year-old, with wealth waiting on deck, discuss his love for college, his desire to not be the focus and even the evils of plaque.
Say hello to Greg Oden Saturday night, when Ohio State meets Georgetown in the national semifinals. Say goodbye him after the Buckeyes’ last game. He’s ready for the NBA now. Maybe he was ready last year, when the league passed a rule mandating at least one year between the senior prom and a paycheck.
But while one year of college has benefited him, two would be a colossal waste of time.
“It’s kind of weird to think about, but I’m trying to prepare myself and get a lasting impression,” said teammate Mike Conley Jr., who has known Oden since the sixth grade, acknowledging that their next game together could be their last. “I want this to be a good [exit], if it’s the last game with him.”
If Oden is not the No. 1 pick in the draft, he’ll be second to Texas’s Kevin Durant. If few question his impact as a pro, it’s because he has an NBA body and an NBA mind-set. (“The thing I like most about him is he pays attention to defense,” former Georgetown coach John Thompson said. “Most kids that age only pay attention to offense.”)
Conley said he hasn’t spoken to Oden recently about the NBA but concedes what most believe — that his friend would have gone pro if the NBA had not raised its minimum age requirement. “I think he thought about going to the league before he came in, but now that’s he’s experienced [college], he’s like, ‘I’m glad I stayed this year,’ and he’s had a lot of fun.”
Oden has tried to steer clear of the subject, and generally would prefer blending into the scenery, not easy for somebody his size. Taken aback by the media hoard in this tournament, he deputized two team managers, Matt Ullmer and Ty Shepher, as his quasi-bodyguards. Neither is particularly intimidating, but they sit in folding chairs on either side of Oden as he does interviews.
Oden: “It took Troy Smith four years to figure this out.”
Smart kid. He’s ready.
Clark Kellogg, the Ohio State and NBA alum, lives in Columbus. He said the year in college has given Oden “a chance to grow. He’s been able to deal with the demands placed on him because he’s so high-profile. He’s also benefited as a player because big guys take a little longer, and he’s a little raw offensively.”
Oden hates being the story. If he wasn’t a 7-footer, he said: “I’d be enjoying spring break.”
People compare him to Russell, or Wilt, or Shaq. He doesn’t get it. People zero in on tonight’s matchup against Roy Hibbert, Georgetown’s 7-2 center. Oden thinks: Why?
“I appreciate it,” he said. “But I don’t watch a lot of college basketball when I’m home, so I wouldn’t be watching it.”
On life in Columbus: “It’s great. It’s the spring quarter. It’s nice and warm. You get to wear shorts and tank tops. It just makes everything brighter. School’s fun.”
Take a look Saturday night. Get ready to say goodbye. And be thankful he’s holding a basketball and not a drill.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Final Four
Smart Oden ready for NBA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
If Greg Oden decides one year of college is enough and the NBA gets its next great center in the coming months, Ohio State should still consider itself lucky and the rest of us should consider ourselves, well, safer.
I’m having this recurring vision. It involves a 7-foot, 280-pound man with a surgical mask, walking toward me, holding up a drill, asking me to say, “aah.”
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four page“I like dentistry,” Oden said Friday. “I just went to the dentist. It was nice.”
It turns out that the Ohio State center has an affinity for something other than blocked shots, layups and looking down on opponents and saying, “Hey, little man.” He loves going to the dentist. He wanted to be one. Whether there exists a mouth that could fit around Oden’s hand is another matter.
Dentist?
“I don’t know why, I really don’t,” he said. “It’s very relaxing in the chair. You just lay back.”
Dissecting somebody’s bicuspids might not rank high on an NBA scout’s list of desires for a center, relative to, say, knocking out somebody’s bicuspids. But it was refreshing to hear a 19-year-old, with wealth waiting on deck, discuss his love for college, his desire to not be the focus and even the evils of plaque.
Say hello to Greg Oden Saturday night, when Ohio State meets Georgetown in the national semifinals. Say goodbye him after the Buckeyes’ last game. He’s ready for the NBA now. Maybe he was ready last year, when the league passed a rule mandating at least one year between the senior prom and a paycheck.
But while one year of college has benefited him, two would be a colossal waste of time.
“It’s kind of weird to think about, but I’m trying to prepare myself and get a lasting impression,” said teammate Mike Conley Jr., who has known Oden since the sixth grade, acknowledging that their next game together could be their last. “I want this to be a good [exit], if it’s the last game with him.”
If Oden is not the No. 1 pick in the draft, he’ll be second to Texas’s Kevin Durant. If few question his impact as a pro, it’s because he has an NBA body and an NBA mind-set. (“The thing I like most about him is he pays attention to defense,” former Georgetown coach John Thompson said. “Most kids that age only pay attention to offense.”)
Conley said he hasn’t spoken to Oden recently about the NBA but concedes what most believe — that his friend would have gone pro if the NBA had not raised its minimum age requirement. “I think he thought about going to the league before he came in, but now that’s he’s experienced [college], he’s like, ‘I’m glad I stayed this year,’ and he’s had a lot of fun.”
Oden has tried to steer clear of the subject, and generally would prefer blending into the scenery, not easy for somebody his size. Taken aback by the media hoard in this tournament, he deputized two team managers, Matt Ullmer and Ty Shepher, as his quasi-bodyguards. Neither is particularly intimidating, but they sit in folding chairs on either side of Oden as he does interviews.
Oden: “It took Troy Smith four years to figure this out.”
Smart kid. He’s ready.
Clark Kellogg, the Ohio State and NBA alum, lives in Columbus. He said the year in college has given Oden “a chance to grow. He’s been able to deal with the demands placed on him because he’s so high-profile. He’s also benefited as a player because big guys take a little longer, and he’s a little raw offensively.”
Oden hates being the story. If he wasn’t a 7-footer, he said: “I’d be enjoying spring break.”
People compare him to Russell, or Wilt, or Shaq. He doesn’t get it. People zero in on tonight’s matchup against Roy Hibbert, Georgetown’s 7-2 center. Oden thinks: Why?
“I appreciate it,” he said. “But I don’t watch a lot of college basketball when I’m home, so I wouldn’t be watching it.”
On life in Columbus: “It’s great. It’s the spring quarter. It’s nice and warm. You get to wear shorts and tank tops. It just makes everything brighter. School’s fun.”
Take a look Saturday night. Get ready to say goodbye. And be thankful he’s holding a basketball and not a drill.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Final Four, Jeff Schultz
The Countdown: Final Four Edition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10) Wow. So that’s why Norcross was so good.
9) Went to Wikipedia, that online fountain of misinformation, only not nearly as funny as the Enquirer and without the pictures of the Olson twins sharing a rice cake. Typed in “Greg Oden.” Discovered this: “Greg Oden (born January 22, 1988 in Buffalo, New York) moved to Atanta[sic], Georgia to attend Norcross Highschool[sic] to win a State Championchip[sic].”
8) Here’s a rule of thumb: Any time there are three typos in one sentence of a reference source, it’s probably not accurate. Or, I was deadline. I’m just guessing, but the dude who edited this into Oden’s bio probably attends a school that lost to Norcross/Transfer High School during the season. And, note to said dude and aspiring biographer: Learn how to spell.
7) The latest rumors have Kentucky preparing to offer Billy Donovan $1 million more than he’s making now. Check back at noon Sunday. It’ll be up to $1.5 million, the Colonel’s secret recipe and an autographed copy of Barbaro’s last will and testament.
6) Seriously, does anybody in Kentucky really believe this is going to come down to money? No collection of blue-blood, blue-hair, boozed-up boosters are going to be able to outbid Florida, one of the wealthiest universities with one of the most powerful athletic departments on the globe. If Billy Donovan leaves Florida, it will be because he has some morbid curiosity about coaching in Lexington — not because Kentucky can pay more. Because it can’t.
5) Joakim Noah: “I think I’m more of a lover than a hater.” Shoot me now.
4) Donovan on something other than the Kentucky job: “I still hold true to what I said a year ago. I think if you would start this tournament all over again, there would be maybe four different teams sitting up here right now.” Good. I still like Louisville.
3) According to some NBA mock drafts, the first three picks will be freshmen: Kevin Durant, Greg Oden, Brandan Wright. Combined transferable credits from the spring semester: 6.
2) Forget Oden. It turns out Ohio State has won 21 in a row because coach Thad Matta has avoided black cats. “He’s superstitious,” guard Mike Conley said. “He’ll wear a tie that’s been picked out by his daughter every game, or he’ll be in a different position for the National Anthem.”
1) Over/under on how many ladders Jim O’Brien walked under?
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Jam-packed Final Four shaping up
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
On Final Four weekend, it’s prudent to recall the 2005 BCS title game. Billed as the best matchup in bowl history, it wound up like this:
Southern Cal 55, Oklahoma 19.
But enough with the caveats.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageAny old way you choose it, this is a great-looking Final Four. It has big-time teams (14 NCAA titles among them, including last year’s) and big-time players (nine future lottery picks, according to NBAdraft.net) and, above all, big-time balance.
There’s not a mystery guest in the house. There’s no Penn of 1979, no Wisconsin of 2000, no George Mason of last year. As cute as it was to have those teams in the Final Four, the cuteness died when they actually played and lost badly. It’s hard to imagine any of these teams losing badly. It’s not hard to imagine any of them as the national champ.
“We don’t want to be a cute, trendy team,” said John Thompson III, Georgetown’s coach, this week, and he has no concern on that front. None of these teams does. Each is no worse than a No. 2 seed. Each has won at least 30 games. Each has at least one player who made first-, second- or third-team All-America, according to The Associated Press.
“It’s the toughest field we can all remember in a long time,” said Billy Donovan, Florida’s coach, and now we need ask: In how long?
“Since 1993,” said Jim Nantz of CBS, who’s working his 22nd Final Four. The ‘93 Final Four was comprised of three No. 1 seeds — North Carolina, Kentucky and Michigan — plus No. 2 Kansas. It had the tradition of old money, Kentucky and Carolina being the two winningest programs, plus the mass appeal of the baggy-shorts-wearing Fab Five.
As splendid as that convocation was, this has the potential to be even better. There’s even more star power. Joakim Noah is the reigning Final Four MVP. Greg Oden will be the NBA’s No. 1 pick whenever he deigns to leave. UCLA’s Arron Afflalo was the Pac-10 player of the year. Jeff Green was the Big East player of the year and is, in his estimation, “probably the most unselfish player in the country.” When last did you hear someone brag about being selfless?
And when last was there a question about which semifinal was the marquee game? “I was very anxious to see which one they’d pick [as the more prestigious nightcap],” Nantz said. “It’s almost a coin flip. You’ve got Greg Oden vs. Roy Hibbert, which isn’t Olajuwon vs. Ewing but is the best we have to offer in the college game today, but in the other you’ve got a rematch of last year’s title game.”
More than simply having name-brand teams and recognizable players, this Final Four also spans the breadth of the nation. “One of the things that has hurt is the recent run of two teams from the same conference,” Nantz said, noting that this is the first time since 1998 that four different leagues are represented. “That’s a great achievement for those conferences, but it kind of dilutes the national appeal.”
There should be no dilution these next three days. Ticket demand (via scalpers and the like) has been stronger than in recent seasons, and Nantz has already detected a difference in the host city. “I’ve walked around your town a lot the last couple of days,” he said, “and there’s a buzz that wasn’t there in 2002.”
It’s up to the teams to deliver on that buzz, and the belief here is that they will. After Florida won the Midwest Regional, Noah shouted to the crowd: “Keep hatin’!” That, however, won’t be easily done. There’s nothing to hate about this star-spangled Final Four, nothing to hate and a lot to love.
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Most memorable Masters were both watery
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Invariably, when the subject of the most memorable Masters tournament comes up, my mind filters down to a precious two. In 1954, Billy Joe Patton, then a gregarious and charming Walker Cup invitee from Morganton, N.C., almost became the first (and as yet, only) amateur winner. In 1986, Jack Nicklaus, on whose brilliant career the lamp was running low, won at the age of 46. Those two. Those two.
This memory deals with Patton and the Masters of 1985, 31 years after Billy Joe let his golden moment get away. As for me, it was the only Sunday round I’ve missed in the 57 Masters I’ve covered. Only a team of Clydesdales could have drawn me away from Augusta National on Sunday, and in this case, it was a force even stronger. I had been summoned to Chapel Hill to be inducted into the University of North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame, and there I watched by television in the snug old Carolina Inn.
In Billy Joe’s year, he had led after the first round, then taken the lead again when he holed out on the par-3 sixth on Sunday. The gate to Augusta was wide open in those times. You drove up, bought a ticket and drove in, and herds of those North Carolina mountaineers, Billy Joe’s friends and neighbors, had rushed down on the weekend to urge him on. The treacherous 13th hole, a par-5 but then just 465 yards long, with a brook trickling below the green, was a temptress. Lay up or go for it? Always the adventurer, Billy Joe went for it, found the brook, tried to play it out and double-bogeyed. When a similar temptation arose on the 15th fairway, egged on by his hillbilly cheering section, he went for it again, and again he bogeyed. He was out of it. (Sam Snead and Ben Hogan finished in a tie for the lead, and on Monday, Snead won the playoff.)
Now, 31 years later, Curtis Strange had opened with an 80, 8-over par, but recovered gamely with rounds of 65 and 68, and going into the 13th hole on Sunday held a three-stroke lead. Then disaster struck. He aimed his approach at the green, but came up short and landed in the watery grass by the brook. Curtis and his caddie were inspecting their plight under the prying eye of television, delivering the scene to my room in Chapel Hill.
In the upper corner of the screen appeared a pair of white golf shoes, and a body followed the shoes onto the scene. It was the rules official assigned to the match. He wore a green jacket and a white hat, Billy Joe Patton himself 31 years later and older. He watched over the situation of Strange and his caddie debating what to do next. Take a drop and chip it up? (After all, he had a three-stroke lead.) Or, try to hack it out?
That’s when I wanted to cry out to the television screen, “Tell him, no, Billy Joe! Take a drop! Remember what happened to you!”
Strange bogeyed the hole, then bogeyed the 15th and the 18th to add disaster to injury. Meanwhile, Bernhard Langer played in with a round of 68, beat Strange, Floyd and Seve Ballesteros by two strokes, and became just the third foreign winner of the Masters. It wouldn’t be long before he would be joined by a flood of champions from overseas. But in the case of Patton and Strange, oh, what might have been.
Some years later Billy Joe Patton was asked about what might have been. “It’s probably better that I didn’t win,” he said. “I could have handled the fame, I could have handled the money, but I don’t know if I could have handled the women.”
Permalink | | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Bluegrass intrusion allowed by Donovan
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Billy Donovan says he doesn’t carry his cellphone on the road. He says he hands it to his secretary, who screens all calls. Donovan says this frees him to go from watching film to conducting practice without being troubled by the outside world. That’s what he says.
Reality, at least this weekend’s version of it, might be rather different. Donovan has to know he’s the central figure in this Final Four for two divergent and possible divisive reasons: He coaches the team that’s trying win consecutive titles, and he’s the leading candidate to coach an even higher-profile program next season.
If he’s lucky, Florida will win again and he’ll be able to say his personal status had no impact on his team. But say Florida loses. Will Donovan spend the rest of his life wondering if he was the distraction that kept the best team he’ll ever coach from fulfilling its manifest destiny?
Asked on a conference call Wednesday if he would mention Kentucky to his players, Donovan said, “There’s nothing more to address. I’ve already addressed it.”
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageActually, what he has done is to act as if he has no say in anything — from last weekend: “That has nothing to do with me; it has everything to do with Kentucky. … I’m not the decision maker in the process” — but that’s just not true. If he’d decided he wasn’t interested in the Wildcats, the way Bobby Cremins did back in 1985, that’d be the end of it. But Donovan didn’t say those words, and by not saying them he has made it seem as if he’s willing to listen.
Can we fault him for that? No, because it’s the American way to want to make scads more money. But also yes, because his Gators are in a position no team has occupied in 15 years.
Three of them — Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Corey Brewer — famously deferred personal gain for the commonweal. Would it have killed Donovan to say, “Ordinarily I’d be flattered if Kentucky came calling, but this just isn’t the time for me to be thinking about anything but this team and therefore I’m removing my name from consideration”? He keeps telling his guys to live for the moment. Is he living for the moment by letting his name linger in the air, by allowing the rumor-mongerers in the Bluegrass to run amok?
Example: My brother called from Maysville, Ky., on Tuesday, saying Lexington TV was reporting that Donovan was coming to Kentucky. Turned out one station had seized on a rumor posted on The Cats’ Pause message board and stated it as fact. (Full disclosure: I once worked for — and was fired from — The Cats’ Pause.)
No, Donovan has no control over what somebody in Lexington chooses to float on the Internet. But if he’d said, “Sorry, not interested,” the postings would be about Rick Barnes or Tom Crean. As it is, Donovan-to-Kentucky will hang over this Final Four the way Roy-Williams-to-North-Carolina hung over the 2003 edition, and that one didn’t end so sweetly for the coach and his men.
The Jayhawks beat Marquette (coached by Crean, who has done little since) by 33 points in the semi, but they fell behind Syracuse by 18 and yielded a record 53 first-half points in the title game. They still might have won but for missing 18 of 30 free throws. Were they distracted or simply outplayed? We’ll never know, and neither will Ol’ Roy, who, when pressed by CBS about the Carolina job afterward, loosed a malodorous word on live television. (Earlier he had bristled when asked about the Tar Heels on the pre-Final Four conference call.)
Williams eventually got his championship at Carolina, but those Kansas players — Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison and Keith Langford — never did. No matter where Donovan coaches in the years ahead, he’ll have more chances to win it all. These remarkably selfless Gators have only one shot to do their double. They’re chasing history. As the last leg of their long slog approaches, might one or two among them be wondering: What’s our coach chasing?
Permalink | Comments (85) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley
Today’s Final Four countown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Yeah, I’m getting a little tired of counting down, too. My kingdom for a tipoff. I mean, this is sort of like waiting for “Anna Nicole: The Lost Physics Exams,” or the NCAA giving the nod to academics over athletics. (Hey, transition!)
9: Had to admire NCAA President Myles Brand on Thursday for saying he was concerned about the meteoric rise of some coaches’ salaries (see: Nick Saban now; maybe Billy Donovan soon). Quoth Brand: “Is this the appropriate thing to do in the context of college sports?” But, like: Pot, meet Kettle. The words would carry more weight if they weren’t coming from the head of perhaps the most hypocritical organization in athletics.
8: You might remember in 2005 when the NCAA passed what it considered a “landmark” academic reform package to, in Brand’s words, “reinforce the idea that student-athletes are students first.” Now there’s a concept. We all have lofty goals. Personally, I’m for world peace. But a few months after that announcement, the NCAA rubber-stamped its approval for college football teams playing a 12th game. That effectively wiped out a potential bye week for the sake of revenue and increased physical and emotional wear on said “student”-athletes. Then again, it fell in line with other grab-the-money-and-run decisions, which has led to wonderful things like 10 p.m. tipoffs.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four page7: Look, I’ve got no problem with people making money. I’d like to do it myself someday. But if the NCAA is going to continue to act like a professional sports outlet, just shed the amateur see-through cape and pay the athletes. That won’t happen, though, because Brand doesn’t see anything wrong with the NCAA’s decision-making and, in fact, denies that academics have been compromised (we pause for a moment of silent reflection).
6: Brand: “One of the frustrations we have is when people get their facts wrong. Academics have improved. Kids are doing better, not worse. The facts are that, academically, they’ve done better since we added the 12th game.”
5: I wasn’t even going to ask for the data. Numbers can be spun. If graduation rates and/or grades really have risen, imagine the ramifications of an official saying: “No, we won’t take the money. Our kids need more time to study.” And Brand might want to know that the last time I checked with a few coaches and athletics directors on the NCAA’s decision making, rolled eyes were looking back at me.
4: OK, the NCAA doesn’t make money on everything. Practice is free today. Greg Oden will be the really big guy, hoping to not be a Hawk.
3: It’s hard not to like Tubby Smith as a person or a coach. But does anybody really believe he was completely oblivious to his agent entertaining other coaching offers for six weeks?
2: And then there was the small college in Boca Raton (Lynn University) where students get three class credits for passing, “The Final Four Experience.” It’s part of a sports-management degree. They stay in a hotel, go to basketball (Final Four), hockey (Thrashers) and baseball (Georgia Tech) games and then go home. Supposedly, there is homework involved. But I think we’ve seen this before in Athens.
1: Hey, wait, that’s my job.
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Nothing better than Final Four Saturday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The championship game has a trophy presentation and ‘One Shining Moment’ on the big screen, but Final Four Saturday has twice as many games, twice as many teams, 10 times the color and pageantry. And isn’t college sports all about color and pageantry?
The championship game offers finality, but Final Four Saturday offers possibility. How many times has the least likely team wound up winning on Saturday and then again come Monday night? (Think Villanova in 1985. Think Kansas in 1988. Think Arizona in 1997. Heck, think Syracuse in 2003.)
The championship game gets the big TV rating, but Final Four Saturday is the place to be. Two teams play, then another two. Will Bynum twists for the layup then beats Oklahoma State, and then Emeka Okafor snares the loose ball and makes the basket that sinks Duke. (I was sitting with some Georgia Tech staffers at the end of the UConn-Duke semifinal in 2004, and it was hard to know what part made them happier — that their team was going to the title game or that the Dookies weren’t.)
The championship game ends the season and crowns a titlist, but Final Four Saturday is why we keep coming back to this event with such anticipation. After all, CBS doesn’t hype ‘The Road to the Title Game’ all season; it’s ‘The Road To The Final Four.’ It’s why this event is different from — and better than — the Super Bowl and the World Series and the NBA Finals.
The championship game is one massive game, but Final Four Saturday is a big fat doubleheader. There aren’t many of those in sports anymore, not even in baseball, and double features at the movies died with drive-in theaters. (I know, I know. There’s this ‘Grindhouse’ twin bill coming up, but the hype it’s getting shows how novel the concept is in a squeeze-every-dollar marketplace.)
The championship game is a great event, but Final Four Saturday is a great day. It’s the best day in American sports. And this year it’s here.
Jackie Robinson’s cause stalls
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The conversation involved Jackie Robinson, a national treasure who died 35 years ago. He nevertheless lives forever after he used April 15, 1947 as his springboard toward immortality. He broke more than baseball’s color barrier back then. He unleashed the spiritual forces that would integrate everything from the military to restrooms to schools.
What would Robinson say today about baseball turning “diversity” into only a theoretical word in the dictionary regarding African-Americans?
What would he do?
Tommy Davis sighed over the phone from Los Angeles on Wednesday, and then the former Dodgers standout of the early 1960s said, “He’d probably march. Yeah, he’d probably do something, and I’m quite sure he could get an audience. I know he would get on television. I’m sure he could arrange a roundtable discussion about it, because there’s a problem here.”
A big one, and let’s start with the following: Baseball officials are sponsoring events this weekend in Memphis around something they are calling their inaugural Civil Rights Game. According to a press release from the Commissioner’s Office, this is to “honor [baseball’s] involvement in the historic struggle through which players of color broke barriers and made important contributions to American society.”
Well, if they say so. The NFL had more African-American head coaches during this year’s Super Bowl (two) than the number of African-Americans on the Braves’ current 40-man roster (zero). That’s compared to the 11 African-Americans on the Braves’ 40-man roster just a dozen years ago after they won their only Atlanta world championship.
This isn’t just a Braves thing. It’s a baseball thing. The Chicago White Sox’s Ken Williams is the only African-American general manager. Ron Washington of the Texas Rangers joins Willie Randolph of the New York Mets as the only African-American managers. In addition, the number of African-American players in the majors has dwindled from 27 percent in 1975 to 18 percent in 1982 to less than 10 percent last season.
And, please, no more silliness about how African-Americans are just not into the game anymore and preferring basketball and football.
“I’m not putting the Latins down, because they can play, but baseball has purposely built a bunch of camps and academies in other countries, and they’ve ignored areas in this country where you have African-American talent,” said Davis, telling the truth. As Hall of Famer Joe Morgan likes to say, “You won’t find African-American players if you’re not looking for them.”
Last summer I wrote about the gathering of more than a hundred African-American prospects from high schools across the South. They played at Georgia Perimeter College in Clarkston, and the pro scouts who bothered to come were significantly impressed.
Let’s just say it was a start toward shifting baseball back toward fulfilling Robinson’s legacy. To hear baseball officials tell it, so is this Civil Rights Game. It will be preceded on Saturday by a luncheon to honor Spike Lee, deceased Negro leagues legend Buck O’Neil, and Vera Clemente, the widow of Roberto Clemente. There also will be a group discussion involving various baseball personalities and others on baseball and civil rights.
Davis won’t be one of the panelists, but he should be. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, where he spent his youth watching Robinson terrorize Dodger, opponents with his bat, glove, legs and grit. In fact, Davis signed with the Dodgers instead of the Philadelphia Phillies, Cleveland Indians or New York Yankees after a plea over the phone from his hero.
“When I heard his voice, I couldn’t believe it,” said Davis, now 68, still emotional with the memory. “Jackie obviously was a big part of my life. They should have a holiday, not only for Martin Luther King Jr., but for Jackie Robinson.”
They have an unofficial one in baseball, with every April 15 declared “Jackie Robinson Day.” Baseball also has ordered every team to retire his No. 42.
Now baseball has to retire its hypocrisy regarding it all.
Permalink | | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Today’s Final Four memory
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
So there was Michigan, with much help from Glen Rice going nuts on offense, sliding by Seton Hall in overtime for the 1989 national championship in Seattle.
The ending was shocking, but only because of the beginning.
Not the beginning of the game.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageLet’s return to the beginning of the NCAA tournament that year for Michigan at the old Omni in Atlanta. Two days earlier, Wolverines coach Bill Frieder announced that he was leaving for Arizona State after the season. Then Bo Schembechler showed why he is one of my all-time favorite sports personalities.
Between growls, Schembechler barred Frieder from coaching Michigan in the tournament. Said Schembechler, the Wolverines’ legendary football coach and athletics director, “A Michigan team should be coached by a Michigan man.”
Goodbye, Frieder. Hello, Steve Fisher, Frieder’s assistant, who Schembechler promoted to interim head coach.
It got more interesting. Michigan opened with Xavier back then. When I glanced around the Omni before the opening tipoff, I saw Frieder sitting a few rows behind the Michigan bench. He was forced to buy a ticket for the game.
Frieder was besieged by so many Michigan fans and reporters that he decided to move around the arena. He settled underneath the basket near Xavier’s bench. That’s where he watched Michigan beat the first of six straight opponents along the way to an improbable title with a “Michigan man.”
Soon after the Wolverines’ first national championship in basketball, with Schembechler grinning as if he’d just whipped Woody Hayes or something, he told reporters of his plans for hiring a permanent head coach. “I think we ought to interview Steve Fisher,” said
Schembechler, grinning some more.
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Today’s Final Four countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10 — Welcome, Final Four: Pine, Oak, Sweet Gum and Sycamore. All top seeds.
9 — So I was thinking between sneezes and wheezes, if you’re BoosterBreath from Georgia, what do you choose: Florida sports domination in your hometown? Or plutonium-infused leeches on your forehead?
8 — Is this worse the Jim Harrick era? “Yes.” Worse than losing Tubby Smith? “Yes.” And getting Ron Jirsa? “Oh, definitely.” Even worse than Ray Goff? “Um, well, yes.”
7 — This analysis came from Rick Franzman, Bulldogs’ Litter of ‘75, Marietta resident and furniture salesman. I asked Rick how he feels about the Gators trying to wrap up a second Final Four in the Georgia Dome, just weeks after they won another SEC championship in the Dome, which followed them winning the SEC football championship, which propelled them to the BCS title game, which of course they won. The Gators also have beaten Georgia nine straight games in basketball and, I believe, 2,987 out of the past 2,988 in football, given the one year that they laughed so hard that they passed out and the Bulldogs won on a safety, 2-0. Rick drove off the road. But he faxed me from purgatory.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four page6 — “This is really in your face, having to deal with that arrogance, and having to swallow it and like it.” I told Rick he didn’t really have to like it. Then he softened and admitted he actually started to pull for Florida in the BCS title game. Something about allegiance to the SEC. When I asked about him buckling, he backed off. He morphed back into ManDawg.
5 — “They’re a football school, and they took up with a Yankee basketball coach. That’s the other thing. [Billy] Donovan’s a Yankee. That makes it doubly hard to take. There is true venom for Florida. You know, the Bear [Bryant] once said that Florida was a sleeping giant. Then [Steve] Spurrier goes there and wakes them up and now they’re obnoxious beyond the pale. This is absolutely as hard to take as anything we’ve ever experienced. It’s like making that drive to Jacksonville every year and coming home with your tail between your legs.”
4 — Hey, at least Georgia got its coach signed to a new contract. What’s taking Florida so long?
3 — Nothing says NIT like Clemson-West Virginia.
2 — The AJC’s coverage of the Final Four this week will be exceeded only by the coverage of panda baby Mei Lan, which is why I can report that the cubbie would NOT come out of her cave Wednesday. Something about Carolina wrecking her bracket.
1 — There will be at least a half-dozen NBA lottery picks playing in the Dome Saturday. If even a blind NBA general manager couldn’t pick wrong, well, Hawks fans, you’re in luck.
— Jeff Schultz’s special Final Four edition of “The Countdown” will continue every day through Friday.
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This Fiasco winner’s for the Dogs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Nobody picked the correct Final Four last year because George Mason messed everything up. Nearly everybody — actually, 225 of the 3,091 entrants in the 2007 Final Four Fiasco — picked it this time. Thus did we go to the tiebreakers, and thus, after two rounds of those, did Tim Vanderhoff of Loganville emerge victorious.
Vanderhoff, 32, is a Georgia grad. He played JV ball for South Gwinnett. (He’s 6-foot-4, which made him a center back then.) He works for a Snellville company that sells large-diameter steel pipes. He plays golf almost every day at Summit Chase Country Club. He watches basketball on a new Samsung HD TV, which sometimes displeases his wife Brandi, whom he met via the Internet.
“She was upset at me for watching that last game [Georgetown-North Carolina],” Vanderhoff said. “She gave me the silent treatment. She wanted me to turn the channel.”
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageBut when you’re playing for such stakes — as ever, the Fiasco champ gets an official Final Four sweatshirt — you’ve got to monitor your investment. Vanderhoff won because he had the exact Elite Eight and nailed 13 of the Sweet 16. He did not, alas, submit his bracket in a big-money pool: “We’ve got a small little office, and everyone here is a football fan. They don’t even follow basketball.”
He picked UCLA to win the West Regional because “I’ve never been a big Kansas fan — they seem like perennial losers, even though they’re good at getting to the Elite Eight.” He picked Ohio State in the South because he likes Greg Oden: “The oldest-looking 18-year-old in the world.” He picked Georgetown over North Carolina in the East because “you’ve got to pick your upsets.”
And he picked Florida in the Midwest despite strong personal feelings to the contrary. “When they played Ohio State [for the BCS title], all my buddies rooted for Florida because they were from the SEC. I thought, ‘Gosh, no. That’s all we [Georgia fans] need is for a Florida coach to wave a national championship ring in recruits’ faces.’ “
He likes UCLA to beat Ohio State in the title game. “They play such great defense, and they have such a great coach.”
Were the quirky Fiasco judged like an ordinary office pool — on the total number of games gotten right — Vanderhoff wouldn’t have won. He missed 11 of 32 first-round games. Alice Hardin of Dahlonega, the runner-up, got 29 of 32 (but only 12 of the Sweet 16) and submitted what I consider to be the best overall bracket in the history of this contest. For her sterling effort, Hardin will also receive a sweatshirt.
She’d never entered before. “It was a fluke,” she said. “Someone was talking about it, and I thought about how well I used to do [in her office football pools]. … I would win every week.”
A 1968 graduate of Emory, Hardin is a life coach and counselor. She watches some basketball — “what I can” — and gets advice from her office colleague. If not for her affection for Georgia Tech, she might have gotten 13 of the Sweet 16 and therby won the Fiasco on the final tiebreaker. She likes Georgetown to beat Florida for the title “in a low-scoring game.”
This being the 20th Fiasco, I want to thank everyone who entered this or any year, and I want also to thank all the AJC technical folks for making things run so smoothly. And special mention must go to Elizabeth Bradley, who’s 9 and who filled out her first bracket. She picked three of the Final Four. Her dad, who’s somewhat older, got two.
She kept telling me the Buckeyes would make it, but I wouldn’t listen.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Mark my words: Gators win.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Nothing has changed. Way back when the Florida basketball team was sputtering down the stretch of the regular season, I said then what I’ll say now: This is the Gators’ Final Four to lose.
That said, the Gators could lose.
Rarely has there been a Final Four with every team owning nearly the same chance of going all the way.
Ohio State has those freshmen who function like seniors. Georgetown has the Karma that comes from Hoya fathers (the older John Thompson and the older Patrick Ewing) passing Hoya wisdom down to their Hoya sons (the older John Thompson and the younger Patrick Ewing). UCLA has that defense, Arron Afflalo and history.
Florida just has the same five starters who discovered ways to capture a national championship last year. They also remember how to do it again, because they’ve turned their slump near the end of February into a spurt near the end of March.
I’ll stick with the Gators.
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Today’s Final Four countown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Never have sold my media credential. Never figured it was worth losing my job for. But for $12,000 …
9: Seriously, what would possess even the most diehard, lunatic, whackjob, Cheez Whiz-drooling fan to spend $12,000 for a ticket to the Final Four? Checked on StubHub. There’s a pair of floor seats on sale for $24,000, which actually is up from $22,000 the day before, maybe because gas also went up six cents.
8.: “Actually, there’s also a 10 percent service charge,” my new pal Dave said by phone. “So it’ll be $26,400 for the pair.” Do the tickets come with anything? Like a hot dog? Or a car? “I don’t think so,” Dave said. “But I can check with the sellers to see if that includes anything. But we can waive the $15 handling fee. So then you can buy the hot dog.”
7: Dave would not tell me who originally held the tickets. So I really can’t say for a fact that it’s Phil Fulmer.
6: A company called “ZipWay” announced its new break-away warm-up pants have a “technologically advanced zipper” that allow athletes to remove the pants in “a matter of .3 seconds.” The pants have been endorsed by the NBA Players Association, and Shawn Kemp.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four page5: Look, I don’t think Billy Donovan will leave Florida for the Kentucky job, either. And I’m not saying he should. But if you don’t get why a coach would even consider it, then you don’t get coaches.
4: Is the Florida job better than the Kentucky job? No. But football always will be No. 1 at Florida. Basketball always will be No. 1 at Kentucky. For some coaches, it’s about ego. And if Donovan perceives (operative word) that he can be even bigger at Kentucky than Florida — and if that’s important to him — then of course he’ll think of making the jump.
3: Yes, Donovan would have a limited honeymoon period in Lexington, just like Tubby Smith. But that same win-or-you’re-bupkus attitude that makes the Kentucky fan base insufferable also makes the job bigger.
2: Went to the Gainesville Sun home page online. Hey, look what I see:
TOP STORY
Video: Monday’s Florida football practice
“The Gator football team takes to the practice field, and a UF student comments on the upcoming season during Monday’s training.”
1: Former UCLA coach John Wooden, 96, will be in Kentucky this weekend for a function. Go ahead. Start the coaching rumor.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Final Four, Jeff Schultz
Smith erred by leaving Georgia
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
By going from lordly Kentucky to lowly Minnesota, Tubby Smith just admitted to making the biggest mistake of his college basketball life. And, no, this isn’t referring to the past 10 seasons, when he attempted the impossible. He tried to make those Wildcats Wackos realize Adolph Rupp is still dead and Rick Pitino isn’t coming back.
That was only Smith’s second-biggest mistake.
The biggest? Leaving Georgia for Kentucky or anywhere else.
If Smith stays in town after coaching the Bulldogs to overwhelming success for two seasons through 1996-97, he becomes the Vince Dooley of Georgia hoops. “Yeah. No question,” said Dick Bestwick over the telephone from Athens, where he lives in retirement after 14 years as Dooley’s associate athletics director.
In fact, Bestwick was at Georgia when Dooley joined others in telling Smith that he’d never be good enough for those Wildcats Wackos who are in search of a national championship every spring or so. That his mellow style would get melted under the intense UK heat. That, in time, Georgia would pay Smith in the vicinity of what he was getting at Kentucky, especially if his Bulldogs continued to progress at the rate they were going.
That the Bulldog Nation just didn’t want him to go.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four page“I’d sure like to have him here, rather than to see him at Minnesota, because I like Tubby so much that I would give anything to have him here with what this job offers, compared to that one,” said Bestwick, who befriended Smith at South Carolina during the late 1980s. Bestwick was the Gamecocks’ athletics director and Smith was their assistant basketball coach. They’ve remained close ever since. Bestwick even dropped Smith a note last week, but it wasn’t to tell Smith that he blew his chance for greatness at Georgia.
Which Smith did, by the way.
Added Bestwick: “The Minnesota job - no matter how good it might be - is not one that can compare to this one as far as available talent is concerned. There is enough basketball talent in Georgia, consistent with the kind of football talent we have in this state, to have successful teams here and at Georgia Tech. Over the years, virtually all of the major powers have had a Georgia kid on their basketball team.”
We’re talking about major powers, medium ones and little ones. Walt Frazier. Josh Smith. Norm Nixon. Dwight Howard. Randolph Morris. Kenny Walker. Dale Ellis. Matt Harpring. Mike Glenn. Kwame Brown. Joby Wright. A.J. Moye. Cameron Dollar. Earl Callaway. Pervis Ellison. Al Wood. Those were just some of the gifted basketball players with Georgia roots.
As for the state of Minnesota, you’ve had Kevin McHale.
If you really wish to stretch the point, Minnesota also has produced the decent likes of Randy Breuer, Sam Jacobson and Jim Petersen. Plus, Wisconsin starting point guard Kammron Taylor is a Minnesota guy. So was Khalid El-Amin, among the leaders of UConn’s national championship team in 1999. It’s just that, while Minnesota produces Division I standouts in ripples, Georgia does so in waves.
Here’s how this relates to Smith: Among other things, those Wildcats Wackos ripped him for his recruiting issues (no Kentucky natives on the Wildcats’ active roster at the end of last season, and Chris Lofton, a former Mr. Kentucky, dribbling at Tennessee). Well, if Smith stays at Georgia, he gets many of those home-grown stars by accident. If Smith stays at Georgia, he benefits from the school showing its commitment beyond O Holy Football by adding the last bricks to a $30 million practice facility for hoops.
If Smith stays at Georgia, he saves the Bulldogs from the sorry years of his successor, Ron Jirsa, and the corrupt years of Jim Harrick. If Smith stays at Georgia, he makes the Bulldogs at least the equal of Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee.
If Smith stays at Georgia, everybody is happy, including Smith.
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History of hoops strong in Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
College basketball tournaments have been finding their way to Atlanta since the 1920s, when the original Southern Conference teams poured into town by train or bus and put on their show at the then-stylish, now old and creaky, Municipal Auditorium. (Yep, it’s still there, serving some kind of purpose to Georgia State University.) About 5,000 saw the championship game in 1927. Vanderbilt beat Georgia.
Basketball was more or less a second cousin to football in those times. Often, the coach was a football assistant who wanted to pick up some extra cash during the winter. A basketball coach was seldom ever fired. Teams often were dominated by football players, staying in condition during the winter.
Winning wasn’t important enough to make life so miserable for the coach, as in the case of Tubby Smith at Kentucky, that he chose to get out of town. (And in passing, let me say that if I had to hire a basketball coach today, Tubby Smith would be at the top of my list.)
We leap forward now to 1977. Tom Cousins has built a palace (somewhat) and called it The Omni. Atlanta had reached Final Four status. The combatants were UNLV, Marquette, North Carolina and UNC-Charlotte, and of these four, UNLV appeared most fearsome. Jerry Tarkanian and his coaches paced the sideline in garments that made you wonder who was driving the getaway car. As was, the Rebels got away early, cut down by the Tar Heels. Marquette won the final and Al McGuire wept — for joy.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageWe move now into another century, yea, leap forward in style. The Georgia Dome is in place. Atlanta can now seat 40,000 guests at a basketball game, and there’s nothing the NCAA likes better than the sound of ca-ching. It will allow beer to be advertised on television — “drink responsibly” — but won’t sell the stuff at the games. The Final Four came in 2002, and Maryland won, and five years later it’s back again.
The first official championship — not yet known as Final Four — was played at Northwestern in 1939, with an audience of 5,500. They saw Oregon beat Ohio State. You see, the NCAA was getting a late start. A New York sportswriter named Ned Irish had started the National Invitation Tournament, played in Madison Square Garden, and the winner was generally recognized as the national champion. The NCAA, in its belated wisdom, decided this was too good a thing to leave in the hands of a mere sportswriter. Hence, here came their own championship version, and when it became the Final Four, I can’t say, but there are those in our world who consider it the major sports event in the country. Just shows you what a little effective copy-catting can do, and a lot of geographical skewing.
For instance, how do you like the idea of Western Kentucky playing in the Northwest, or Holy Cross all way out to Idaho? Say this, though, what they’ve done is lessen the margin between the haves and have-nots. Note Winthrop College, once a school for young women, taking out Notre Dame.
What else they have done is make this game impossible to officiate. But for a couple of tweaks, one involving a seriously debated call, the other a missed free throw, you might have a Final Four without Ohio State and Georgetown. Xavier had the Buckeyes on the ropes, ahead by two with four seconds to play and its leading scorer at the foul line for two. Justin Cage made the first. Make the second, let Ohio State have its 3-pointer. Game’s over. But Cage clanks the second, Ohio State ties and wins in overtime. Crushing.
Now, the other was a traveling call that wasn’t made against Jeff Green of Georgetown. Vanderbilt has a one-point lead in the dying seconds, Green pivots, banks in the winning field goal, but did he travel? Clark Kellogg and Billy Packer, two TV analysts, went at it with opposing views in a CBS interview. Kellogg said, “It was a walk. I thought he traveled.”
Packer said he didn’t think he did. “And I stand by my opinion. Three officials on the floor, three sets of eyes, and they didn’t call it.”
Otherwise, you’d probably have two Tennessee teams in one final, Vanderbilt against Memphis, not nearly as stirring as Ohio State against Georgetown. But that’s the short distance between being a winner and a loser in this game, how many calls were missed, how many critical free throws were missed, and how many coaches went home in tears. But not Tubby Smith. He went all the way to Minnesota. He beat the Wildcats browbeaters to the punch, and good for him.
Permalink | | Categories: Final Four, Furman Bisher
Today’s Final Four countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Look for “The Countdown” in Stanley Cup, World Series and Alberto Gonzales editions in the coming months. Also try new “Diet Countdown.”
10: Let me just start by saying, having analyzed all four schools at the East Regional this past weekend, seeing the bottom-seeded Georgetown cheerleaders advance to the Final Four is quite a depressing development.
9: Yes, worse than Vanderbilt’s.
8: Thank goodness for the Final Four, conference championships and the Sugar Bowl two years ago. Otherwise, who knows when we might see another postseason game in the Georgia Dome.
7: From the “Wardrobe Malfunction” category of statements: When asked to explain the technical foul he assessed Georgetown coach John Thompson III, referee Curtis Shaw said: “It’s a bench decorum issue.” Personally, I liked this explanation better, from John Thompson The Elder: “I think John flashed back to his father for a minute. But I probably would’ve had three or four.”
6: For those who don’t think much of a team’s RPI, the Final Four’s respective rankings before the start of the tournament were first (Ohio State), third (UCLA), sixth (Florida) and ninth (Georgetown). Most important, my alma mater, Long Beach State, was 79th — and then got tattooed for 121 points by Tennessee.
5: Roy Williams. He just can’t win the big game. (Oh stop! I’m kidding. Kinda.)
4: Yes, it’s a wonderful warm-and-fuzzy story with the fathers and sons at Georgetown. But, seriously, I can’t remember when I saw a college basketball team have such an extended mind melt in an important game as North Carolina did Sunday.
3: The Hoyas weren’t happy with the officiating early, but the Tar Heels in fact were drawing fouls by driving to the basket and crashing the offensive boards. That disappeared late in the game, and it wasn’t merely because of the Hoyas’ defense. The Heels inexplicably started firing up jumpers from Neptune — and just missed Pluto, going 2-for-25 down the stretch and in overtime.
2: Gators fans will be happy to learn that Billy Donovan is only 11-1 odds to be the next Kentucky coach. Hey, wasn’t it not long ago when everybody wondered if Paul Hewitt was going to leave? There’s the primary indicator of your popularity level: No he’s-gonna-leave-us job speculation.
1: Still like Louisville over Carolina, and Florida over Kansas in the semis.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Final Four, Jeff Schultz
Falcons line up for draft windfall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
They passed the first part. Now comes the difficult part of the brilliancy test for Falcons officials after they did exactly the right thing last week. They got a sucker to give them way too much for a career backup quarterback.
Next, Falcons officials must use all those nice draft picks in April on the definitive guys for their franchise. We’re talking about linemen. Offense, defense. It doesn’t matter. Just as long as they are the antithesis of what the Falcons have gotten lately. So these linemen should be larger than smurfs, and they shouldn’t spend much time in the trainer’s room.
Here’s the exception to everything I just said: If Falcons officials can move up from No. 8 overall in the draft to get the incomparable Calvin Johnson, they should do so. The Falcons need linemen more than they do another wide receiver, but when immortality is available, especially when it’s from Atlanta and starred at Georgia Tech, you snatch it.
Then, after the draft, Falcons officials must hope that the trading of that career backup doesn’t cause their starting quarterback to digress through complacency. We’re talking about on the field regarding the passing game and off the field moving through life as the clumsy face of the franchise.
Did Michael Vick really say that trick water bottle during his Miami International Airport controversy was just something for his jewelry and stuff?
Let’s move on. Hopefully, for the sake of the Falcons, Vick will do the same in a positive way. With Falcons officials trading The Great Matt Schaub to the Houston Texans, Vick doesn’t have to wonder every day if new coach Bobby Petrino prefers a career backup over somebody drafted No. 1 overall. As a result, Vick has a chance to spend his seventh NFL season gaining more fame by perfecting Petrino’s highly acclaimed playbook than by watching his name scrawled at the bottom of various cable news outlets.
No matter what happens in the future with Vick and those draft picks, Falcons officials won for the moment. I mean, what were the Texans thinking? Swapping first-round picks to move the Falcons from 10th to eighth in this year’s draft. Relinquishing two second-round picks over the next two years. Acquiring The Great Matt Schaub and giving the career backup $48 million after starting just two forgettable games during his three NFL seasons.
Then again, the Texans are the NFL’s most incompetent franchise east of Oakland, west of Detroit, north of Tampa and south of Cleveland. The Falcons aren’t incompetent, but they aren’t superior, either. All you need to know is that during the five years of the Arthur Blank regime, the Falcons are working on their third head coach.
Not good. Neither is the Falcons’ ugly slide toward mediocrity that began after they reached the NFC championship game three seasons ago. After a 6-2 start in 2005, they’ve dropped 15 of 24 games. They’ve also shown weaknesses throughout their roster. They’ve made about as many shaky moves (Ed Hartwell, Jimmy Williams, Roddy White, Chris Crocker and John Abraham) during the past three seasons as solid ones (Lawyer Milloy, Wayne Gandy, Michael Boley and Jerious Norwood).
In other words, the Falcons can’t afford to have general manager Rich McKay do anything less than great with this year’s draft picks. That’s great as in Calvin Johnson or a lineman, and that lineman should be somebody such as Jamaal Anderson. That’s not Anderson, as in “Jamal,” who used his legs to power the Falcons into the Super Bowl.
This “Jamaal” was a splendid pass rusher at Arkansas. With the potential to pack even more muscle around his bruising frame of 6 feet 5 and 288 pounds, he’d work well as a replacement at defensive end for the departed Patrick Kerney or as insurance for the oft-injured Abraham.
The point is, Falcons officials have options. They just can’t blow them.
Permalink | Comments (105) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Elder Thompson excited for son
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
East Rutherford, N.J. — When overtime started, the NCAA radio analyst said he “went numb.”
With five seconds left, he started clapping and looked across the court to Georgetown’s bench. As time elapsed, he smiled and pointed at his son.
You want objectivity on a broadcast? Don’t pick a coach’s father. Don’t pick John Thompson. Not when the program he built and the son he raised are trying to make it to the Final Four. Not when Georgetown is playing North Carolina. Not when the Hoyas are trying to exorcise some ghosts from 25 years earlier.
“Everybody kept asking me whether I should be announcing my son’s game,” Thompson said later. “Well, I shouldn’t be. I couldn’t say anything in the overtime. I went numb.”
If Thompson wondered whether something could make him happier than winning a Final Four as Georgetown’s coach, he got his answer Sunday.
He watched as the Hoyas, down by as many as 11 points to a deeper and more talented team from North Carolina, wore down and broke down the Tar Heels. A shot with 31 seconds left in regulation tied it. A blitz in overtime clinched it. Georgetown won 96-84 to reach its first Final Four since 1985.
The “impartial broadcast journalist” for the weekend hugged players, school officials, then his son. He wiped his brow with a commemorative Final Four T-shirt. (That was fast.)
The only lingering reminder of the 1982 finals loss to North Carolina was the silhouette of Michael Jordan on Georgetown’s shoes and warm-ups. It was Jordan who hit the shot that ultimately defeated the Hoyas in the ‘82 championship game, Thompson’s first of three Final Fours. (He would win it two years later.)
“The hell with objectivity,” Thompson said.
Thompson was asked what was more satisfying — coaching a team to a Final Four or watching his son do the same. Easy answer.
“This is,” he said. “I feel very lucky to be able to see this happen in my child’s life. I didn’t need to coach anymore. I don’t need about another spittoon or another trophy.
“People said, ‘You’re gonna miss coaching.’ I don’t miss coaching. This is the greatest thing that could happen to me.”
A rest, maybe. This wasn’t expected. Georgetown has now won eight straight and 19 of 20 as it prepares to come to Atlanta. But it struggled and needed some cross-eyed officiating down the stretch of the East Regional semis to get past Vanderbilt. The team looked terribly outmanned for most of Sunday’s game.
The Tar Heels, who sleep-walked for portions of Friday’s win over Southern Cal before closing with a fury (runs of 18-0 and 41-15), were driving the lane, drawing fouls, hitting free throws. The better team also was the smarter team.
But late in the second half, Carolina went cold. During one stretch, it went 2-for-19. The Heels stopped taking the ball to the basket and started firing up (and missing) long jumpers. The collapse continued in the overtime when they missed their first 12 shots. Only an otherwise meaningless 3-pointer by Ty Lawson in the final seconds prevented an overtime shutout.
Conversely, the Hoyas were disciplined and tough, traits of Thompson’s old teams and of Pete Carrill’s, the mentor of the younger Thompson at Princeton.
“I’m his dad, but that’s his teacher,” Big John said later, after he and Carrill embraced.
Thompson, the son and pupil, learned from both. It looked like the tournament would end here, and again with North Carolina as the winner. But when the Heels began to wilt, the Hoyas began to attack, winning one-on-one battles.
“We were able to slow down their transition a little bit and make them take tough, contested shots,” the younger Thompson said. “Then, with our offense in the half-court, there’s room for one-on-one. We’re not as restrictive on offense as people think.”
He laughed when told of his father’s alleged speechlessness during the broadcast. But when told that his father said he drew more satisfaction from Sunday’s win than any in his own coaching career, the son wasn’t surprised.
“That makes sense,” he said. “It’s much easier for him. I’m already worried about the Ohio State game. He’s sitting over there cheering.”
As it should be with a father watching his son. But the headphones and microphone made him look a little out of place.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Final Four, Jeff Schultz
One delicious Final Four ahead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
St. Louis — There will be no George Masons in the Georgia Dome. There will, however, be four King Georges.
For the first time since 1998 and only the fifth time ever, the Final Four will be comprised of teams already holding national titles. Only once before, in 1995, have the owners of this many aggregate championships (14) convened under one roof.
The reigning champ (Florida) will be there. The program with the most championships (UCLA) will be there. The school that won in 1984 (Georgetown) will be there. And so will Ohio State, which took the title when the hot Buckeyes name was Jerry Lucas, not Greg Oden.
“All the teams moving forward are really good,” said Ernie Kent, whose Oregon Ducks lost to Florida here in the Midwest Regional final. “They’ve all got size and depth and tradition and history. All those things are in place. It should be a great Final Four.”
To be honest, this NCAA tournament hasn’t been all that memorable. The lowest seed to reach the Sweet 16 was No. 7 UNLV. The lowest seed to crash the Elite Eight was Oregon, a No. 3. The first two weekends of the Big Dance were notable mostly for blown leads and for favorites struggling but surviving.
The Final Four should be different for the simple reason that there will be no real favorite. Any of the four could claim the title without it being considered an upset. Asked Sunday if, having booked passage back to the national semifinals, his Florida Gators might be able to relax, Al Horford was incredulous.
“We’re playing UCLA, man,” he said. “Any team that’s left can beat you now if you relax. Now’s the time to step it up.”
Each of the four has had its step-up moment. Ohio State had two near-elimination experiences. Georgetown had two near-miracles in the Meadowlands. UCLA had to defuse Kansas. And Florida had to fight its way through a bracket of challengers primed to dethrone the champ.
Said Corey Brewer: “It’s a lot harder this year. Night in, night out, we get everybody’s best shot. But it’s been really rewarding.”
The Gators, as Horford noted, will play UCLA, the team they trashed 73-57 in last year’s championship game. Said Kent, whose team played both: “This year’s UCLA team is probably tougher mentally having gone through this a second time and having had a much more difficult time in the Pac-10. If they can defend the [Florida] big guys and still get out on the 3-point shooters, they’ll have a chance.”
The other semifinal matches teams powered by big men. Ohio State has Oden, who outscored Memphis’ Joey Dorsey 17-nil in the West Regional final after Dorsey called him “overrated.” Georgetown has Roy Hibbert, who fought through foul trouble to help fuel the Hoyas’ epic comeback against North Carolina.
The last numbers of this dance could well be epics themselves, but a word of warning: They might not be pretty to watch. UCLA strangles the life out of games with its defense. Ohio State, as evidenced by its propensity to fall into deep holes, can look really awful. Georgetown runs the Princeton offense, which is a clinician’s delight but not necessarily a spectator’s. And even Florida has slogged through four rounds without a truly surpassing performance.
“We’ve had to go through the journey a different way,” Gators coach Billy Donovan said. “We couldn’t do it the same way [as last season] because people were not going to let us.”
But nobody has stopped the Gators’ repeat-after-me mission yet, and it will take a giant of an opponent to do that. Three giants remain. Three worthy challengers, one defending champ, one delicious Final Four.
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Afflalo assumes leadership role for UCLA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
San Jose, Calif. — You had tradition against tradition Saturday night at HP Pavilion, where there was enough college basketball history to spread from here to John Wooden’s house to James Naismith’s grave. That was significant only until the opening tipoff. Then it became UCLA against Kansas, with the opportunity for one of them to become the team of now along the way to the Final Four.
That team wasn’t Kansas, an impressive bunch, but one without something that UCLA clearly had.
A main guy.
While UCLA had Arron Afflalo again and again when the Bruins needed him most, Kansas tried to have Brandon Rush, the Jayhawks’ gifted sophomore. Instead, he joined the rest of his teammates in a desperate search for a leader down the stretch that they didn’t have.
The result was an Afflalo-led explosion midway through the second half that produced a 68-55 victory for UCLA and a reality for Kansas: You still need leadership with talent. Despite the Jayhawks’ overwhelming number of McDonald’s All-Americans, they nevertheless played like what they are, and that is a collection of freshmen and sophomores.
“We played young when we got behind,” said Kansas coach Bill Self, delivering his version of saying that the Jayhawks hadn’t anything close to a main guy.
As a result, Kansas was clueless against a team with more than a few players back from a group that reached last year’s championship game. Those UCLA returnees begin and end with Afflalo, a first-time All-America guard, who scored 15 of his 24 points in the second half. He also willed the Bruins to a record 17th trip to the Final Four.
“He’s been our leader, and we go to him in big games, and he was feeling it today” said UCLA’s Josh Shipp, with Afflalo squirming nearby.
We’re talking about a humble leader. So despite Afflalo’s splendid ways throughout the evening, which included a 3-pointer at the end of the shot clock and another while falling awkwardly toward his left, he deflected credit.
“You know, it really wasn’t me individually. It was the whole mind-set of our entire team,” Afflalo said. “I was just fortunate enough to make the jump shots tonight, but we went into the locker room [at halftime] talking about playing for 40 minutes, playing together, and we just kept that aggressive nature, and it proved to be effective for us.”
Twenty minutes. That’s all that separated the Bruins from Atlanta after they surged near the end of first half for a 35-31 advantage. Afflalo was the catalyst to it all, and such also was the case when he began the second half with a fastbreak layup after a rousing block by Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and that 3-pointer near the end of the shot clock. Before long, UCLA was rolling at least toward the outskirts of Douglas County with an 11-point lead (46-35), and Kansas was stumbling back toward Lawrence.
The Jayhawks were in desperate need of something.
Rush, to be exact. He was fine at the start for the Jayhawks by doing all sorts of things to make Afflalo look ordinary by comparison. When Rush wasn’t scoring from up close or from afar, he was blocking shots. In contrast, Afflalo sort of disappeared for a while.
Then Afflalo surfaced near the end of the first half. With UCLA shooting away Kansas’ momentum that became a 29-23 lead inside the final five minutes before intermission, Afflalo scored from the corner and then from the lane. More impressive, he dribbled patiently at the top of the key with the clock ticking and ticking before shoveling to Shipp for a 3-pointer and that 35-31 lead for the Bruins.
That’s when Rush vanished for the rest of the evening. He scored just seven of his 18 points in the second half, and many of those seven came long after UCLA unofficially had completed its trip from Douglas County to the Georgia Dome.
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Cinderella slippers may fit Ducks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
St. Louis — This is what passes for Cinderella in the Big Dance of 2007: The tournament champion of the league that has won more national basketball titles than any other; a team that has been in the Top 25 since December; a No. 3 seed that has beaten Georgetown, UCLA, Washington State and Southern Cal. That said, the Oregon Ducks are the lowest seed left in the tournament, so don’t they feel a bit like this year’s George Mason?
Uh, no.
“A lot of people haven’t seen us play,” said Bryce Taylor, one of Oregon’s four starting guards, “but we’ve had some big wins. We kind of take the underdog role personally. We use it as extra motivation.”
George Mason embraced its sleeper status to the max last year, its pep band adding “All I Need Is Miracle” and “Livin’ On A Prayer” to its repertoire. The Ducks bristle because more folks haven’t paid attention. Taylor again: “West Coast teams get overlooked or underrated.” That isn’t true if you’re UCLA, but it is if you’re a Duck.
Said Tajuan Porter, the smallest of the four guards and a native of Detroit: “I didn’t even know Oregon was a state until Malik [Hairston, his high school teammate] went there.”
Said Ernie Kent, the Oregon alum who coaches the Ducks: “Sometimes it’s hard to sell the rain [precipitation is a fact of everyday Northwest life] to someone who comes from California.”
Just because Oregon seems slightly rustic doesn’t mean it’s a mid-major. It’s a major major. Its enrollment is 20,333. It won the first NCAA basketball title in 1939. Its athletics programs are heavily funded by Nike, which rules the world. Alumnus Phil Knight, Nike’s founder, is a quacking Duck fan, and he’s here for the Midwest Regional. “He’s no different from any other booster at Michigan or UCLA,” Kent said. “But he hasn’t called a play yet, and I don’t know if I’d let him.”
Oregon plays Florida today, and these Gators have become a brand name to rival Nike. Florida has a small forward who’s 6-foot-9. Oregon’s leading scorer against UNLV on Friday was Porter, who’s 5-6 and who had 33 astonishing points. “The ultimate challenge,” Kent called his team’s date with the big and swift Gators, but any team that has beaten the people Oregon has — the Ducks led Southern Cal, which nearly beat North Carolina, by 40 points 15 days ago in the Pac-10 tournament final — cannot plead poverty.
The Ducks can play. They just play somewhat differently. They resemble Villanova of a year ago — lots of guards, tons of quickness, barrels of 3-pointers — but it’s worth noting that Florida handled Villanova rather easily in this round. “I’m definitely tempted to watch [the tape of that game],” said Kent, who admitted: “What Villanova did definitely influenced us.”
It’s a funny space the Ducks occupy: They’re too accomplished to be the tournament darling but too obscure to be a full-blown power. Kent again: “There are a lot of big names sitting center stage this weekend, and our name is not as big.”
Maybe that will change today. Maybe the watching world will get a load of this brace of Ducks and decide that Porter is the cutest thing since Spud Webb. “Everybody loves to cheer for the little guy,” Kent said, and Porter is definitely little. His size, or the lack thereof, prevented bigger (pun intended) schools from recruiting him, and even his fellow Ducks weren’t sure what they were getting.
They soon learned. Said Aaron Brooks, the relatively massive (he’s 6-foot) point guard and the team’s best player: “I had to guard the little dude. He put on a couple of moves that kind of shook me.”
Can the Ducks pull the moves that will shock the defending champs? Probably not. But it should be fun to watch them try. They really don’t qualify as Cinderella, but you never know. Maybe mighty Nike is about to put the swoosh on a line of glass slippers.
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Dynasties are a dying breed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
East Rutherford, N.J. — There was the snapshot of what college basketball is today: a coach, sitting at the dais with the core of his team — three freshmen and two sophomores.
A decade ago, we would think: dynasty.
Today we wonder, “Who leaves?”
Brandan Wright, a freshman, has lottery pick stamped on his forehead. Ty Lawson, another freshman, has the speed at point guard to make up for his lack of NBA size. Tyler Hansbrough, a sophomore, would benefit from another year in college, but since when did that stop anybody?
“We could be like Florida if everybody stuck around,” Lawson said. “We could have like two or three championship runs.”
North Carolina, one step from another Final Four, faces Georgetown in today’s East Regional final. Take the snapshot, because logic dictates the Tar Heels won’t stay together.
This is a team with seemingly limitless athletic ability and potential, as evidenced in Friday’s semis when it went on an 18-0 run in 6 1/2 minutes and, after falling behind Southern Cal by 16 points, outscored the Trojans 41-15 to finish the game in a 74-64 win.
That has been a trait of the Heels this season: playing hard when they need to. But the comeback illustrated the upside of this team, an upside that may never fully be reached.
Carolina players realize this might be their one and only run together, although they are reticent to talk about it because it opens the door to questions about the NBA.
“I thought about that at halftime [Friday night],” Lawson said. “This is our chance at the national championship. This is our chance at the run. If we lost the game, our chance would’ve been gone.
“Maybe guys will leave. Maybe they won’t. But I don’t want to take that chance. I don’t want to wait and see what happens next year.”
Wright is a fleet, 6-foot-9 forward with a wingspan that crosses state borders. He also can sense questions about his future before they leave a reporter’s mouth, as he did Saturday when he said, “I’m just worried about trying to win games and helping this team get to Atlanta.”
But when asked how good he believed Carolina could be if the team stayed together, Wright said: “Great. Really great. I mean, we’re pretty good right now.
“Guys have different reasons for what they do, and I’m not the type of guy who’s going to get into people’s business for the decisions they make. But it would be nice to see a team stick together for a while, just to see what it could do.”
Every school goes through this, although North Carolina is worse than most. Two years ago, the Tar Heels won the national championship but lost their top seven scorers off that team — and four were underclassmen.
Coach Roy Williams has learned to trust this team, despite its youth. An example came when Southern Cal jumped ahead 49-33 early in the second half, and Williams … did … nothing.
“We’re down 16 points in the second half and we look over at Coach Williams and he’s not calling a timeout,” sophomore Marcus Ginyard said. “He’s just telling us to get the ball up the floor and continue to play. We feel the confidence the coach has in us.”
Williams has a chance to go to his second Final Four in three seasons. It helps that he can stuff his roster with high school All-Americans every year. But surviving roster churns, wayward freshmen and players distracted by impending NBA paydays is no easy feat.
As he sat on stage, Williams looked to his left and said: “We have five guys up here, all freshmen and sophomores. To be able to accomplish this would have been unheard of several years ago. I can assure you I don’t take it for granted. Before I go to bed, I sit back and I say, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ They make me look good, and I hope they continue doing it.”
He meant in this tournament. He knows it would be foolish to assume anything beyond that.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Final Four, Jeff Schultz
Hoyas travel around obstacle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
East Rutherford, N.J. — Georgetown should have a real simple game plan in the NCAA tournament: Avoid low-seeded teams that start with “V.”
Villanova.
Vanderbilt.
A community college in Vicksburg.
Just say no. Or NIT.
“We’re just glad, and we feel fortunate, that we won,” coach John Thompson III said Friday night. “That’s about all I’ve got to say.” Yes, take the win and run to Sunday.
Georgetown was back in a familiar position Friday as a high tournament seed, trying to reach its first Final Four since 1985. That year, the Hoyas (a No. 1 seed) lost to Villanova (No. 8) in the championship game, regarded as one of the greatest upsets in sports history.
Had the Hoyas lost to sixth-seeded Vanderbilt on Friday, it would not have ranked with that gut shot. But when you go into a game with a famous son as coach (Thompson) and a famous son as a player (Patrick Ewing Jr.) and just a seeming advantage in the aura department — Georgetown vs. Vanderbilt — you expect more than this.
You expect more than needing the benefit of two calls down the stretch to escape with a 66-65 win over Vanderbilt to reach Sunday’s East Regional final.
But, um, nobody’s complaining.
“Traveled? No,” forward Jeff Green said with a slight smile after throwing in a desperation bank shot with about two seconds left to give the Hoyas their final lead. “There were a lot of guys down there. I probably got pushed. The play was good, and that’s all I can say. We won.”
Those Georgetown teams in the 1980s, they made it look a lot easier (the Villanova game notwithstanding) than the Hoyas did against Vandy.
They certainly had looked the part coming into Friday. They had won 17 of their past 18, this following consecutive midseason losses to Pittsburgh and Villanova (of course). In this tournament, they had pounded Belmont and beat Boston College.
But the spirits that occupied their bodies Friday were not those of a team coached by the elder John Thompson (who was courtside doing radio commentary, probably with a headache).
Georgetown took a 4-0 lead. Then it went 6 1/2 minutes without a field goal. By then, Vanderbilt had led 18-6. The Commodores led by as many as 13 points (27-14) and settled for a halftime lead of eight (32-24).
The Hoyas woke up the Big East echos in the second half. When Green hit a jumper six minutes into the half, it gave his team its first lead, at 39-38, since 5-4. But the rest of the half evolved into a series of lead changes. With four minutes left, Georgetown center Roy Hibbert fouled out, and a pair of free throws by Derrick Byars gave Vandy a 60-57 lead.
Said the Commodores’ Dan Cage: “When there’s four minutes left and the game’s within five points either way, honestly, call it arrogance, but we think we’ve got the game won.”
They might have. But the Hoyas got a bit of help. Green’s three-point play tied it at 60-all. With two minutes left, Georgetown guard Jessie Sapp appeared to both palm the ball and travel on a drive to the hoop. But neither was called and Sapp layed it in.
The Commodores — who committed only five turnovers but were outrebounded 40-26 — jumped back ahead on free throws, 65-64. But after a timeout with 14 seconds left, the Hoyas got the ball into Green, whose first option was to feed Ewing on the backdoor. But when Ewing was covered, Green backed in, fumbled the dribble, picked it up and shuffled both feet (confirmed by TV replays) before falling back and banking it in against two defenders.
Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings took a pass on criticizing officials. “I haven’t seen the replay — I don’t care to,” he said. “He made a great shot. The officials didn’t see anything, so there must have not been anything.”
Take it and run Georgetown. And the good news is, all the “V” schools are gone from the tournament.
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Falcons traded the wrong QB
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
To get to the point, the Falcons traded the wrong quarterback. Of course, that’s an illogical conclusion. They had no alternative. How are they going to dump a $70 million load on some other NFL team? The logical conclusion is that Arthur Blank and his franchise are wed to Michael Vick, and when an athlete’s picture begins to appear more often on the front page than the sports page, it’s a marriage in trouble.
Now, having said all that, you’ll note the modest little line that appears beneath the picture of that grizzled old guy accompanying this column, that what is written here is strictly my opinion. The very notion that the Falcons could have traded Vick rather than Matt Schaub is preposterous. But it was a question of hanging onto the quarterback from Wahoo U. and losing him next winter. Schaub is a commodity. He is a quarterback in the NFL tradition, drop back, find the target, deliver the pass or hand off. Run only when under defensive duress.
One of the platforms in Vick’s defense is dropped passes. The Falcons traded a first-round draft choice for Peerless Price. A bummer. Then used first-round choices to draft Michael Jenkins and Roddy White, and still the passes keep falling. “You don’t see any wide receivers trying to get to Atlanta,” as beat writer Steve Wyche says.
But is it all the fault of the catchers? Vick is inclined to dally about before he decides to run or to pass, while his receivers roam around, never quite sure where they should be, should he decide to pass, or what. So it would seem there’s enough blame to pass around. Look, there’s no doubt that Vick is a bundle of talent, but to this date the investment hasn’t been paying off. Among other things, he has become a public embarrassment, flipping off the fans, his Ron Mexico escapade, or whatever you call it, and now the Infamous Water Bottle Mystery.
Ever strike you strange that he took 65 days to explain that thing, and that the “mystery substance” was jewelry? Did he swallow it? Did somebody heist it? He doesn’t appear to be much disturbed about it, other than to suggest that someone might have been trying to “frame” him. What next, Michael, for heaven’s sake?
It has become he-said, they-said, Rich McKay said. Bobby Petrino said, or rather, it was said that the new coach “brushed it off,” whatever that meant. (Remember, it was one of Petrino’s Louisville players who was stepped on by Vick’s brother in the Gator Bowl, not that that’s either here or there. But what intrigue!)
Whether Vick ever becomes the classic quarterback he was supposed to be, he’s locked in as a Falcon. There are no takers with all his baggage. What McKay did was get the most out of Schaub before he lost him on the open market. The Texans thought enough of him to put David Carr on the market, a No. 1 draft choice.
A lot of fans put money into those No. 7 Vick shirts. You don’t see a lot of Schaub shirts. To suggest that Vick has become a burden rather than an asset is an irritating thought, but for the man picking up the tab for a $109 million payroll this season, this situation has “hit the wall,” as they say.
Blank had no choice. Mine would have been Schaub. My opinion, as it says.
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Wooden’s shoes are too big to fill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
San Jose, Calif. — News conferences during the NCAA tournament are usually routine affairs. So this was striking on Friday at the HP Pavilion. Three times, UCLA coach Ben Howland chastised folks in the back of the room for making too much noise. Once, he cut off a questioner for his version of a faulty premise.
Later, Howland explained to those squirming in their seats, “I just like for things to be run properly. I’m a detailed-oriented guy, and that’s the difference between being good and great.”
Sounds like You Know Who. Despite 32 years out of coaching, his shadow still smothers UCLA basketball. That’s because as the most vibrant 96-year-old you’ll ever see, John Wooden still attends most home games. Not only that, he still sits at the end of the second row, right behind the Bruins’ bench to make his dominant era live enough to strangle anybody less than brilliant as head coach across the way.
Howland isn’t Wooden brilliant, but he is close enough.
For verification, consider the intriguing declaration on Friday from the first of the seven poor souls who mostly wallowed in Wooden’s shadows along the way to screaming into the night.
“Well, I think Ben is awfully good at his job, and he has a chance with his background in the [Los Angeles] area and with his knowledge of everything to sustain the UCLA legacy maybe better than anybody since John,” Gene Bartow said over his cellphone from Memphis, where he is a special assistant to Grizzlies general manager Jerry West.
Maybe you’ve heard that Bartow used to coach a little. He took Memphis to the NCAA title game. He also built the athletics department at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where he led the basketball team to seven straight trips to the NCAA tournament, including the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight. He also coached at some Los Angeles school, but let’s return to Wooden and Howland for a moment.
“Ben’s been successful at Northern Arizona and Pittsburgh, and he’s an outstanding coach, he works hard, and he’s a great person,” Bartow said. “Of course, John was such a special coach. He did so much that nobody is going to do what he did.”
Bartow should know. In 1975, he was hired at UCLA to do the impossible in a hurry. He was expected to replace a national icon who had just retired after grabbing his 10th national championship in 12 years while winning 82 percent of his games in 40 years of coaching high school and college. The problem was, at 52-9, Bartow was only pretty good during his three seasons with the Bruins. He even took them to the Final Four in 1976, but he wasn’t Wooden.
Or even Howland.
With Howland’s fourth UCLA team slated to meet Kansas today at HP Pavilion, he becomes the first coach to take the Bruins to a regional final in consecutive years since You Know Who. Howland also led the Bruins to the Final Four and the championship game last year for the first time since 1995, when UCLA captured its first and only world championship since the retirement of You Know Who.
This isn’t to say the others didn’t provide UCLA with post-Wooden success. There was Jim Harrick, the architect of that world championship for the Bruins 12 years ago before his infamous stay at Georgia. Among Larry Brown’s many travels, there were his two seasons in Westwood, where he even took the Bruins to a national title game. Steve Lavin won 21 or more games during six of his seven years with the Bruins, and Gary Cunningham, Larry Farmer and Walt Hazzard weren’t awful.
They just weren’t Wooden, with a slew of national championships, or Howland, who threatens to win big for a while, even though he has yet to go all the way. Bartow chuckled, saying, “Ben knows.” Then Bartow sighed, adding, “Everybody is still following John Wooden.”
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Gators get another tough test and pass
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
St. Louis — There’s a reason no team has repeated as champion in 15 years. There’s a reason the sappy CBS theme song is “One Shining Moment,” one as opposed to two. See, repeating is hard.
Florida has a great team. Florida could well win it again. But already the Gators have had two close calls, and they’re only halfway home. On Sunday they trailed Purdue in the second half. On Friday they had an even rougher ride against Butler, which has one-fifth of Florida’s talent but which, given a break or two (more about that shortly), could well have unhorsed the titlists.
Florida won despite making just 17 baskets. Florida won despite failing behind by nine points in the first half and by four in the second. Florida won against the kind of team — a strong-willed underdog built on pace and precision — that lives to upset the big boys in March. Florida won because it was not just better than Butler but tougher.
“When your backs are against the wall,” said the Gators’ Corey Brewer, “you’ve got to make a play. The plays we made tonight, that comes from playing with each other for so long.”
Take away a play or two and it might well have been, “So long, Gators.” Butler’s Brian Ligon missed a point-blank layup that would have given his team the lead with three minutes left. At the other end, Al Horford took the ball low and started backing Brandon Crone goalward.
Said Horford: “I caught it, and Corey was signaling to me, ‘Go score, go score.’ “
Said Brewer: “He had a guy on him who was about 6-foot-5. [Crone is listed at 6-6, Horford at 6-10.] What was the use kicking it out?”
Horford and Crone began to bump. They bumped for a good long while. Other referees might have called an offensive foul. These did not.
Said Crone: “It could have been a number of things. It was probably a no-call. But it was down to me. I let him back me down without pulling the chair [stepping back abruptly].”
Horford twisted, shot and hit. Crone was called for his fifth foul. Horford made the free throw. With 2:34 to play, the defending champs took a lasting lead. Soon Butler’s Mike Green missed two free throws, and soon after that he drove on Horford, who blocked his shot. Another set of referees might have whistled Horford for brushing Green’s body. This set did not.
And yes, the Gators took 28 free throws to Butler’s 13. But before any Duke-like conspiracy theories take root, let me attest that Peg Brand, wife of NCAA president Myles Brand, sat alongside her husband on press row politely clapping for Butler.
The point isn’t that Florida won because of the officiating. The point is that the defending champ was again extended by a lesser opponent. (Purdue was a No. 9 seed, Butler a No. 5.) It isn’t that the Gators are playing badly; it’s that everyone else is rising to meet them.
“Teams are going to play you a lot differently because you’re the defending champ,” Horford said. “We’ve got to keep coming with a lot of effort. We’ve got to keep grinding and getting stops.”
Just as everyone underrated Muhammad Ali’s ability to take a punch, we get caught up describing the Gators’ skill and selflessness while overlooking their grit. If they hadn’t guarded Butler so well — their big men were superb at switching and jamming the Bulldogs shooters on the perimeter — free throws wouldn’t have mattered at the end.
“We’re not going to be a thing of beauty,” Florida coach Billy Donovan said. “The whole thing about this team this year is moving forward. At times it’s going to look ugly.”
On Sunday the Gators will try to play their way back to the Final Four. They’re halfway to their grail, and it hasn’t been easy so far. It will get harder still.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
This time, Kansas will not be denied
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
San Jose, Calif. — At halftime, members of the Southern Illinois band suggested they knew something that nobody else did on Thursday inside the HP Pavilion. They eased into a lovely version of “Georgia on My Mind,” as in Atlanta, as in where the Final Four will happen next week.
As in, what were they thinking with their underdog Salukis trailing mighty Kansas heading into the second half?
They were thinking that Kansas didn’t look all that mighty on the scoreboard. We’re talking just a 27-24 lead for the Jayhawks, the No.1 seed in the West Region. This was before Kansas became the latest team to prove that the NCAA Tournament isn’t about appearances. It’s about surviving, advancing and forgetting after each round that you came so close to losing along the way to a national championship.
Just like that, the Jayhawks can become the Final One, because they kept discovering ways down the stretch against pesky Southern Illinois to survive a slew of Jamaal Tatum jumpers, the Salukis’ swarming defense and themselves.
“I thought we were able to grind it out, and we were very fortunate to win,” said Kansas coach Bill Self, the realist, who told his players before the game exactly what would happen. Whether they believed him is highly questionable. Inside the final 40 seconds, with Southern Illinois refusing to cooperate by folding, Self had to draw up a new play on the fly for star Brandon Rush, which worked to perfection. Then the Jayhawks had to hold their breath at the buzzer when Tony Young missed a three-pointer for a 61-58 victory.
The usually high-octane Jayhawks were forced to adopt to the rock-em, sock’em style of their opponent who nearly became a college basketball version of Buster Douglas to Kansas’ Mike Tyson. “I think that shows, I mean, whatever the circumstance is, we can adjust,” said Kansas guard Mario Chalmers. “Even though we like to play an up-tempo game, try to get into the 80s and stuff like that, we can slow it down, and we can take our time and slow it down with the best of them.”
More to the point: A win is a win, especially now, with Kansas actually doing another impression. Try that of Jerome Whitehead sending Marquette past UNC-Charlotte, or Ron Lewis sinking a three-pointer to push Ohio Sate toward an overtime winner over Xavier. The Jayhawks’ Whitehead and Lewis was Rush, with slightly less dramatics. “The new play?” said Rush, Kansas’ gifted sophomore, responding with raised eyebrows. “It was just to give it to the guard, let him try to penetrate or pitch ahead to our big guy. Posting up. [It] went on from there. If you get the chance, just pull up and take the shot.”
Rush was that guard, and Rush was the guy dropping home the layup for the Jayhawks’ final margin of victory with 25 seconds left to play.
Why the game was even close is only a slight mystery. In the end, Kansas outshot Southern Illinois from the floor 60 percent to 37 percent, and that margin was worse after the first half. Still, despite the Jayhawks shooting 62 percent to Southern Illinois’ 28 percent back then, the Salukis band was confident. Such things happen when you keep turning the ball over to an aggressive defense, and your opponent has a tendency to just hang around until you look up and discover that the Elite Eight is slipping away in a hurry.
As a No. 4 seed, Southern Illinois isn’t David, but nobody would classify any team from the Missouri Valley Conference as Goliath, either.
Well, Kansas would. Even now, Self still is haunted by the big and bad ghost of Bradley, another MVC team. The Braves knocked Kansas out of the first round of last year’s NCAA Tournament, and lowly Bucknell somehow did the same the previous year.
So Kansas got it right this time after obliterating Niagara (107-67) and pushing Tubby Smith closer to Minnesota with an 88-76 smashing of Kentucky. Then the Jayhawks did what they had to do against Southern Illinois, and that was just win.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Final Four, Terence Moore
Only Vandy would abolish AD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
East Rutherford, N.J. — Less than four years ago, Vanderbilt announced it was going to move to another planet. It’s true that most SEC schools already viewed Vanderbilt as being from another planet, but, well, when the hoity-toity university said it was dissolving its athletic department, that was as good as a positive alien blood test.
“I was like everybody — I didn’t know what it meant,” Commodores coach Kevin Stallings said Thursday. “All I knew was we didn’t have an athletic director anymore.”
Turns out that’s quite the overrated position.
There are four schools in this East Regional. North Carolina has cachet with its history, its conference and a No. 1 seed. Georgetown is a former Big East power that has been resuscitated by another John Thompson. USC is not UCLA but it is West Coast glitz and part of one of the nation’s most dominant athletic departments.
And then … there’s … Vanderbilt.
Are they still here?
March Madness in Atlanta:
“We haven’t been the kind of team that has commanded, nor maybe even deserved, the same level of respect that the Georgetowns and some of the others have,” said Stallings, whose 22-11 team actually started the season 1-3 and lost to Furman. “I would think the mere fact we’re in the Sweet 16 with a chance to play into the next round would be motivation enough. But if the fact we’re given little chance to win this game works to our players’ advantage, then so be it.”
Some would say they already have overcome the odds. In September 2003, Chancellor Gordon Gee shifted scholarship athletics under the same tent as intramurals. The athletics director, Todd Turner, lost his office and eventually left for Washington. Coaches now reported to the head of the “Office of Student Athletics, Recreation and Wellness.”
Gee looked around and saw college athletics had run amok. There were academic scandals at Georgia, Fresno State and Missouri. There were coaches gone wild at Baylor (Dave Bliss) and Iowa State (Larry Eustachy). There was Maurice Clarett, period.
Gee said at a news conference: “There is a wrong culture in athletics, and I’m declaring war on it.” He felt student-athletes needed to be a greater part of campus life. He believed the focus had strayed too far from academics, which is amusing considering Vanderbilt already was throwing off the class curve.
At the time, Gee also told a Nashville newspaper, the Tennessean: “It’s a return to the first principles of why we started playing games at universities in the first place — for a confluence of mind and body and spirit.”
And we all thought: Cute. What next? World peace and inseparable socks?
It’s difficult to gauge whether Gee’s revolutionary idea is a huge structural success. We only know that he’s saving an AD’s salary, and it certainly hasn’t been a disaster.
We also know that nobody has followed Vanderbilt’s blueprint.
“This isn’t going to happen anywhere else, certainly not in the SEC,” said senior guard Dan Cage. “We’re a private school and people at high levels here have enjoyed doing things different.
“I don’t think Alabama is going to take the leap. With their football team, they’re not going to take advice from us.”
Cage mused that after he graduates, “Maybe they’ll hire me as AD. I can walk around and have no responsibility whatsoever.”
This is Stallings’ eighth season, and he barely notices the difference since the restructuring. “Our buildings are still in place,” he said. “Our ticket office still works, as does our media relations office and fundraising office and all of the other things that go on in an athletic department.”
But he says he’s “not surprised” others haven’t followed.
“We’re a unique school in the SEC,” Stallings said. “They’re all similar. We’re different. But I can understand why Florida wouldn’t change what they’re doing. Last I checked, they were doing OK.”
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Final Four, Jeff Schultz
Tubby’s leaving is Kentucky’s loss
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
St. Louis — Tubby Smith didn’t forget how to coach. Tubby Smith just got tired of people insisting, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary, that he didn’t know how to coach. He leaves Kentucky for roughly the same money at a lesser program because he decided, rightly for him but sadly for Kentucky, that coaching there was no longer worth the aggravation.
Here’s what Mike Slive, the commissioner of the SEC, said about Smith as the shocking news blazed across the Midwest Regional here Thursday. “He’s a wonderful guy, a great coach.” And a credit, it was suggested, to Slive’s conference?
Said Slive: “A credit to the game.”
But that’s the thing about Kentucky. (I’m both a native Kentuckian and a UK alum.) The Big Blue has come to believe it’s bigger than the game, that a season ending without a national championship is an abject failure of coaching, that all those other schools — North Carolina, Duke, Kansas, Florida, UCLA — are having their moments only because the Wildcats have been misdirected. There’s a certain strain of Kentucky fan that believes the pecking order should be as it was in the ’40s and ’50s, when Adolph Rupp rarely lost a conference game and often won the national championship.
That’s the thing about Kentucky: It keeps trying to live in the long-ago past. Rick Pitino rekindled the Wildcats’ sense of entitlement in the ’90s, but it should be noted that Smith won exactly as many NCAA titles as Pitino. And the argument conveniently levied against Smith — that his 1998 championship was achieved only with Pitino’s players — ignores the reality that Smith was (and is) a better bench coach than Pitino has ever been.
And now he’s Minnesota’s coach. What Tubby said to me last week in Chicago — “I can always get a job” — sounds in hindsight like the exit line of a man who’d wearied of the job he had. The wonder is that it took him so long. There was a certain segment of Kentucky fans and media that never forgave Smith for not being Pitino, who went out of his way to construct a cult of personality. Tubby wanted no part of cult status. He simply wanted to coach his team and raise his family.
I’ve said this before, but here it is again: As a human being, I admire Tubby Smith as much as any coach I’ve ever known. He was the absolute right man to help Kentucky put aside its history of racism regarding its basketball program, and he won so often — he never missed the NCAA tournament, never failed to win 20 games and took five SEC tournament titles in 10 years — that you had to believe even the bigots had been swayed.
It would be easy now to say that Smith was made to feel uncomfortable in Lexington because he’s black, but I will never believe as much. I believe he was made uncomfortable because Kentucky fans (the weasel AD Mitch Barnhart chief among them) haven’t grasped the reality of 21st Century basketball. Nobody wins all the time — not Duke, not Kansas, not Carolina, not UConn, not UK. There’s no coach who’s going to make the Big Blue as dominant as it was under Rupp, or even Pitino. The world has changed. The SEC has changed.
Tubby Smith will do fine at Minnesota. (He has taken every program he has coached, Tulsa and Georgia included, to the Sweet 16.) Tubby Smith will make roughly the same money with one-tenth the aggravation. He isn’t leaving because he forgot how to coach. He’s leaving because he has forgotten what it’s like to coach in peace.
He’s leaving and it’s not his loss; it’s Kentucky’s. The same school that once ran off Bear Bryant has made itself untenable for a man who has the unanimous respect of his peers. That’s a terrible reputation to have. Kentucky fully deserves it.
Permalink | Comments (154) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Pitt, UCLA coaches insist friendship won’t get in way
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
San Jose, Calif. — No question, UCLA’s Ben Howland and Pittsburgh’s Jamie Dixon are terrific college basketball coaches, but they also are terrible liars.
Forgive them, though. They are doing the right thing. If they really told the truth on Wednesday at the HP Pavilion about how difficult it will be for best friends during much of the past 25 years to spend tonight attempting to reach the Elite Eight by slaying the other, they wouldn’t be able to function properly.
Neither would their players.
Come to think of it, Ben Howland and Jamie Dixon were named Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith before, during and after the Super Bowl last month. Just as Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts and Smith of the Chicago Bears evolved into Dr. Phil by fibbing that their close relationship wouldn’t bring extra tension to their lives while battling each other during a huge game, Howland and Dixon have taken the same approach.
Surely Dungy and Smith provided the blueprint forever on how you should handle these situations. Right? Dixon squinted after hearing my question outside of Pitt’s locker room, then said, “You know, the Super Bowl falls during basketball season, so I don’t have time to watch things too much and get a feel on stories.”
See what I mean about the whoppers from these guys? Dixon and Dungy even share the same attorney. Still, Dixon said he wasn’t familiar with the biggest story line of this year’s Super Bowl not involving that historical thing involving African-American coaches. “I know [Dungy and Smith] worked together in the past, but I didn’t know their relationship was that deep, and it’s because I’m so single-minded in December, January and February,” said Dixon, 41, chuckling, trying to sound convincing but failing.
The same went for the suddenly forgetful Howland, and he is a long ways from senility at 48. Even though he spent four splendid years through 2003 resurrecting Pitt basketball from the dead before leaving for UCLA, he kept giving the impression that his savior days in hoops around western Pennsylvania were light years ago. That is, if those days ever occurred. “Really only one player on the team I coached, and that was Levon Kendall, who was a redshirt freshman my last year,” said Howland, who didn’t tell the rest of the story.
For one, Pitt hadn’t managed a winning season during the three years prior to Howland’s arrival, and his Panthers eventually reached the Sweet 16 twice. For another, Pitt is where Howland and Dixon strengthened their already-thick bond. As was the case at Northern Arizona, where Howland had a five-year run of goodness before leaving for Pitt, Dixon was Howland’s top assistant. They also were assistants together before that at University of California at Santa Barbara.
It gets deeper. When Howland took the UCLA job, his daughter, Meredith, was so attached to the Dixon family that she left Los Angeles to stay with the Dixons while attending Pitt. She later became a cheerleader for the Panthers. Now, at 22, and continuing at Pitt these days as a graduate student in nursing, Meredith is the Dixons’ primary babysitter.
If that isn’t enough, Howland was a pallbearer last year after Dixon’s 28-year-old sister died suddenly. Howland and Dixon also talk every day.
“Well, I wouldn’t say every day, but we talk to each other a few times a week during the course of a year,” said Howland, shrugging in the UCLA locker room. He kept hoping that this line of questioning would end in a hurry.
When it didn’t, Howland forced a nervous smile, before adding, “You know, college athletics are different. These kids have four years to play college basketball. The point is, it’s about the players. It’s not about Jamie and I, because we’ve been doing this for a long time, and we’ll be doing it a long time more. We hope to be in some more NCAA tournaments, and the main thing is, we’re now in a 16-team tournament. Two very good teams are meeting in a very important game. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Uh, nice try.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Final Four, Terence Moore
Trading Schaub makes sense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
When an NFL team trades its backup quarterback, it’s logical to take that as an endorsement of the starter. But what happened Wednesday, when the Falcons closed in on a trade that will send Matt Schaub to Houston for draft picks, isn’t really about Michael Vick. It’s about Matt Schaub.
There is a tendency to elevate backup quarterbacks to savior status, at least until such time as they actually get on the field. Then the savior lines up behind the left guard and every yahoo in section 120 wonders, “So who’s No. 3?”
Schaub was a third-round pick. He started two games in three seasons. He lost both. Somewhere along the way, he morphed into Y.A. Title holding a clipboard.
One day Matt Schaub was a dirt lot. The next day, he was a dirt lot with rumors of a mall, condos and a country club. Guess what? If the Falcons really thought Schaub was prime real estate, they wouldn’t be trading him.
Bobby Petrino has held the coaching job for two months. I’m not certain, but I’m guessing all except 12 minutes for bathroom breaks has been spent on player analysis and watching game tape. If Petrino looked at Schaub and concluded, in so many words, “Wow!”, he would not be gift-wrapping the Falcons’ next starting quarterback for the Texans.
It doesn’t mean Schaub is destined for doom (although you certainly wonder about the personnel decisions of a franchise that passed on Reggie Bush and Vince Young, and only last season extended the contract of David Carr, who’s now available for a nickel). It doesn’t mean Schaub won’t develop into a solid NFL starter. But it does mean that Petrino didn’t view Schaub as the right fit — not for this offense, not for this team, not now, maybe not ever.
Petrino relishes the opportunity to see Vick in his offense. That said, he can’t be certain Vick’s the answer. He only suspects Schaub isn’t. Trading Schaub is the right decision for several reasons. But let’s start with this one: No quarterback controversy.
With Schaub on the depth chart, the debate would’ve started in training camp. It would have been a distraction with all of the usual elements of a quarterback controversy, only with the addition of race and the wattage of anything involving Vick.
Remember when Vick took over for Chris Chandler and the racial divide in the stands, including Chandler’s wife? This would’ve been worse, if only because Vick has become such a lightning rod and has been as much news off the field as on it. Taking his immense talent and potential out of the equation, he has been central to too many soap operas. Even after six seasons, there remain questions about his maturity and his ability to lead a team.
The Falcons have unraveled the last two seasons. Maybe that wasn’t all Vick’s fault. But he hardly stopped the bleeding, either.
Trading Schaub should be a calming element for Vick. The move says, “OK, this is your team. Let’s see what you’ve got.” If he messes up, Petrino’s not going to the bullpen. At least, not this season.
Mind you, this means nothing for Vick’s future beyond 2007. Salary cap issues were going to keep him on the roster through this season. Whether his Falcons tenure extends beyond 16 more games is up to him.
It’s no secret the Falcons have personnel deficiencies. Their offensive line is undersized. Their pass rush just lost Patrick Kerney and returns an injury-plagued John Abraham. There are holes on both sides of the ball. Too many recent draft picks have yet to pan out (notably Roddy White and Jimmy Williams).
Trading Schaub doesn’t fix the problems, but it certainly creates opportunity. The deal enables the Falcons to swap first-rounders with Houston, effectively moving them up two spots to eighth overall. Two more second-round picks (this year and next) will come to Atlanta — which is good in theory, anyway. Also, Schaub’s salary tender ($2.3 million) comes off the books.
This doesn’t make the Falcons a Super Bowl team. But wherever they’re going, the message is clear: Schaub wasn’t going to take them there.
Permalink | Comments (99) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
UCLA still the gold standard
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
I was riding on the shuttle from the Chicago Hyatt Regency to the United Center last Sunday, and I got to talking with Larry Farmer, who played at UCLA when UCLA was the only school worth playing for. He later coached the Bruins — after Larry Brown, before Walt Hazzard — and Loyola (Ill.), and over the weekend he was doing NCAA commentary for Westwood One radio.
Some people love collecting stamps. I love hearing about UCLA’s glory run (10 championships in 12 seasons, in case you’ve forgotten) because I saw it only from afar (via sporadic TV broadcasts from my old Kentucky home, sporadic because college basketball was then considered a regional sport). Farmer and I spoke for 20 minutes. I only wish it’d been 20 hours. Here were some of the things he said:
That Jerry Tarkanian, who went on to greater fame at UNLV, still blames Farmer for costing Long Beach State the 1971 NCAA title. Tark’s 49ers, headed by All-American guard Ed Ratleff, led UCLA by 11 points in the West Regional final, but the Bruins rallied and Farmer blocked a backdoor layup that Tark still regards as the game’s pivotal play.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageThat, having blocked the backdoor layup and taken the rebound, he (Farmer) couldn’t wait to pass to Sidney Wicks, the Bruins’ All-American forward. Farmer was just a sophomore sub then and, he said, “I didn’t want any part of the ball.” Wicks made the free throws that gave UCLA one of only two narrow escapes — the other was against Drake in the 1969 Final Four — in its march to seven consecutive titles.
That UCLA and Southern Cal used to fly to Pac-8 away games on the same plane, but that the Bruins would sit in first class while the poor Trojans landed in coach.
That he (Farmer) learned his trade by practicing against the greatest set of forwards (Wicks and Curtis Rowe) in college history on a daily basis.
That Bill Walton, whom Farmer played alongside as a junior and senior, was the greatest fundamental player he had (or has) ever seen.
That he (Farmer) still holds the best winning percentage of any collegian ever. “I was 89-1,” he said. “Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] was 88-2.”
That the one loss Farmer suffered still rankles. It came against Notre Dame in South Bend in 1971. Austin Carr scored 46 points against a series of Bruin defenders. I asked Farmer if he’d been one of them. “I was about the only one who didn’t get to try,” he said.
As noted, I grew up in Kentucky, so I know all about UK and Louisville. And I’ve seen North Carolina and Duke and UConn win multiple championships, and I’ve been to Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence and to the Izzone in East Lansing and to Assembly Hall in Bloomington. For all that, the first school that comes to mind when I think of college basketball is the one that won all the time when I was learning to love the game.
When I see those blue-and-gold uniforms, I don’t just see Arron Afflalo and Darren Collison; I see Walton and Kareem and Wicks and Rowe and John Wooden and those 10 astonishing championships in 12 years. To me, UCLA was and always will be the standard of excellence. And when I hear someone like Farmer talk about how it was to have been part of such a thing, I feel like a wide-eyed kid again.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Exercising rites of spring
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — This was the most popular day of spring training — a day off. Golf, fishing, going shopping with Baby. Well, that may be stretching it a bit. Time was, players didn’t take wives to spring training. Couldn’t afford it. Teams put players up in hotels with a roommate, the Bainbridge in St. Petersburg, the Manatee River in Bradenton, the Angebilt in Orlando, and the Astros were so cheesey players were stuffed into a dormitory on the grounds. That was many Marvin Miller years ago.
Spring training for the Braves this year was more or less for the exercise. Bobby Cox could have filled out his opening-day lineup card in February and it would still have played in April. This might be a hard sell among the clientele of Turner Field, who are not too happy that Marcus Giles was dropped like a hot potato and that Adam LaRoche was passed along for a short reliever. Or, that Kelly Johnson has been the second baseman since the first pulled muscle, and Scott Thorman the first baseman.
The brightest prospect in camp is another second baseman, Martin Prado, another one of those infielders from Venezuela. Johnson has picked it up with the bat, and by opening day he will have played his way into the manager’s heart. Thorman was a slow beginner, with a swing that needed some kick in it. He’s a big hunk, with the build of a tight end, and when he does start connecting, the fences won’t hold him. It all comes with confidence.
And if it doesn’t come, there’s Craig Wilson behind him. I don’t know how the Braves were lucky enough to pick up this guy running around loose. He has some wallop and three seasons ago hit 29 home runs for the Pirates. He’s a happy fellow with a clownish sense of humor and appears to have an aversion for barbers. In a pinch, he can play left field, where there’s already a dogfight on between Ryan Langerhans and Matt Diaz. The left-handed Langerhans has more power and is a classic defender, and it makes no difference to Diaz what side the pitch is coming from.
Cox will carry three backup infielders, and this is not a subject to be taken lightly, considering Chipper Jones’ uncertain underpinning. (Lord, how fast the warranties seem to run out on these young bucks.) Willy Aybar filled in ably last season, Chris Woodward is a reliable veteran, and the cheerful Pete Orr is good to have around for his variety of uses. And since Johnson is equipped for either infield or outfield duty, why not?
Two absolutes for this year and many down the road are Brian McCann, one of the purest hitters in the league, and Jeff Francoeur, and so much for that. Andruw Jones has reached such salary heights he may play himself out of town.
The subject of pitching is centered in the bullpen, where the Braves have been hoarding middle men, set-up men, closers and all sorts who fit those scientific terms. No excuses this season. They’ve tapped various resources to plug the gap that John Smoltz left when he went back to starting, then made divorce headlines.
Cox now has his choice of three closers, bear-like Bob Wickman; Mike Gonzalez, for whom they gave up LaRoche; and Rafael Soriano, for whom they gave up Horacio Ramirez.
Then when Mike Hampton began feeling his oats, he takes a few swings with the bat and discovers that he has one of those muscles they call “oblique.” Gone for two months. I think he’s supposed to be in his $14 million salary stage this season, I’m not sure, but any way you look at it, Hampton has been the Braves’ most depressing investment, in company with the deal that brought J.D. Drew to town in exchange for Adam Wainwright, one good season or a 10-year starter, or more.
Then I checked the latest season projections, and in Baseball Digest found that the Braves have fallen sharply in prestige, this team that thrived so handsomely for 14 seasons. In the division of five NL East teams, it is predicted they will finish ahead of one — the Washington Nationals, whose plight will surely revive the old term “lowly” this season. That means, behind the Mets, the Phillies and the Marlins, the Braves and Nationals bring up the rear. Bad company to keep, but they can renew an old acquaintance, Stan Kasten.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
(An online weekly stream of unconsciousness)
10: They’re building a “Hooters” in Tel Aviv. Oy.
9: You know, I have roots in Israel. Never did realize the “Promised Land” actually referred to a day of hope, when we could all orders wings from Bambi and stare at breastacles. Hey, look over there! There’s Abraham, Isaac and Jacob splitting a pitcher! Exodus. Stage left.
8: I’m Jewish but my wife is Catholic. Needless to say, I had to point out to her that Yeshiva won as many games in the NCAA tournament as Notre Dame. (Reminds me of a joke: A Bar Mitzvah is the day a boy realizes he can own a sports team, he just can’t play for one.)
7: (Transition) And speaking of sports teams: Kudos to Georgia State for the hiring of hoops coach Rod Barnes, formerly of Mississippi. Barnes has coached a team to the Sweet 16, and State has long had untapped potential to build a strong intown program. Lefty Dreisell realized some of that potential, but the administration wasn’t committed, in terms of dollars or facilities. It needs to be committed now.
6: I realize it’s not a scientific indicator of a conference’s strength. But I’m assuming the ACC isn’t going to brag about having only one school (North Carolina) in the Sweet 16, especially with the SEC getting three (Florida, Tennessee, Vanderbilt). And you KNOW conference officials and coaches would be gloating if they had three in.
5: Kentucky is not going to embrace Tubby Smith until he gets back to a Final Four, which may not happen any time soon. If I’m him, I resign to take the first good job that becomes available.
4: Instead of being upset with Dolphins linebacker Joey Porter for punching the Bengals’ Levi Jones, shouldn’t we celebrate the NFL player who didn’t bust up a bar, assault his spouse or get caught in a drug sting? Besides, it was a Bengal.
3: Nothing against Keith Tkachuk, whose acquisition gave the Thrashers a needed edge and a big body (an American body!) in front of the net on the power play. But Alexei Zhitnik has brought - and will continue to bring - more to the team than any other new player. He directs the power play, kills penalties, immediately became part of the first defense pairing (with Niclas Havelid, to the chagrin of plummeting Andy Sutton) and is averaging over 26 minutes per game in 10 games (two goals, 10 assists, seven points on the power play).
2: So if I understand this correctly, the Hawks only get to keep their first-round pick if they’re in the top three in the draft lottery. Otherwise, the pick goes to Phoenix as part of the Joe Johnson trade. Question: Anybody posting odds on them getting the fourth pick?
1: Would writing a prayer on a Hooters napkin for the Wailing Wall be deemed inappropriate?
Permalink | Comments (32) | Categories: Jeff Schultz
Hewitt admits where he lapsed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
On the one hand, Paul Hewitt says this was the most talented of his seven basketball teams at Georgia Tech, and in case you’ve forgotten, he once took the Yellow Jackets to the Final Two.
On the other, UNLV is now in the Sweet 16 after much help from an opening victory during March Madness over a blatantly superior Tech bunch. The game before that, the Jackets suffered a meltdown to start the ACC tournament against shaky Wake Forest. As a result, Tech was forced to sweat on the bubble of the NCAA tournament with the likes of Drexel.
So which is it?
Either the Jackets underachieved along the way to finishing 20-12, or they had some coaching issues.
According to Hewitt, this wasn’t a team of underachievers. That’s why he raised his hand the highest on Sunday when he gathered with his staff to discuss who was responsible for what the Jackets did and didn’t do this season.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I thought there were some things early on that I could have simplified to make it easier for them,” said Hewitt on Monday, referring to a loaded roster that included freshmen Javaris Crittenton and Thaddeus Young, a couple of future NBA lottery picks, maybe sooner than later. “I was talking to Dean Keener, my former assistant, who is now the head coach at [James Madison], and I told him, ‘If this group comes back intact next year, what I definitely plan to do is to kind of streamline things offensively.’ They’re so gifted. I just think you have to put them in a position where they can do something with the ball. Earlier in the year, I complicated things a little too much.”
Well, that and the Jackets had spurts where they forgot basketball consists of offense and defense. During their Wake Forest fiasco in the ACC tournament, they watched (and watched and watched) as Harvey Hale scored 21 points after regulation along the way to the Demon Deacons’ 114-112 upset.
Tech also was error-prone throughout the season, and it would be easy to cite overwhelming youth. Mario West was the Jackets’ only senior. In addition to Young and Crittenton, there were freshmen Mouhammad Faye and Zach Peacock joining sophomores D’Andre Bell, Alade Aminu and Paco Diaw in giving Tech a mighty dose of young depth to complement West and standout juniors Anthony Morrow and Jeremis Smith.
Two things: During the modern era of college basketball, when few significant players stay long with teams before turning pros, many teams are youth heavy. Second, even if you take into consideration the inexperience factor, the Jackets looked disjointed too many times.
Was it just the old case of nice players who couldn’t complement each other to form a nice team?
“No, I think it was more an issue of paying attention to details,” said Hewitt, who isn’t at fault here. He is as intense and as precise and as adamant as they come regarding practice and game preparation. Unlike most of his peers, for instance, Hewitt carries what he calls “skill building” and “individual instructions” from the preseason through the entire season.
What’s the problem then? Hewitt paused, before adding, “It’s not that they were uncoachable. It’s just simple things they didn’t do, like remembering to box out every single time. The concentration level just comes and goes at times.”
That said, Hewitt is confident the concentration level will come and stay next season to place the Jackets among the nation’s elite — with or without Crittenton and Young. “There would be some relearning of certain things if they left, but we still would have a good team,” said Hewitt, before adding the clincher: “Don’t overlook the simple fact that we lost the fourth pick in the NBA draft [Chris Bosh], and the next year, we went to the [NCAA] finals.”
So they’ll be fine. Maybe not “finals” fine, but fine enough.
Permalink | Comments (46) | Categories: Final Four, Terence Moore
Reseeding the Sweet 16 field
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
1. Florida: The Gators are under a ton of pressure to repeat, and it showed Sunday against Purdue.
2. Kansas: It’s time for Bill Self to shed the tag of being the best coach never to reach a Final Four.
3. North Carolina: The sleek Tar Heels showed more than their usual grit in subduing Michigan State.
4. Georgetown: Nothing pretty about the Boston College game, but style points don’t matter in this sport.
5. Ohio State: Even eventual champ has a near-elimination experience; the Buckeyes just had theirs.
6. UCLA: Suddenly the Bruins are having trouble scoring, but they defend so well it almost doesn’t matter.
7. Texas A&M: Having beaten Louisville in Lexington, grateful Aggies now get to play in San Antonio.
8. Memphis: The unloved Tigers have reached the Sweet 16 for the second straight season.
9. Oregon: The quickest team in the tournament outran Winthrop, which was no small feat.
10. Southern Illinois: The Salukis’ next task will be to slow down Kansas. Good luck there.
11. Pittsburgh: How ugly will a game between Ben Howland’s former and current teams be? Very.
12. Tennessee: The Vols nearly beat Ohio State in Columbus; they’ll try on a neutral court this time.
13. UNLV: The smallish Rebels figure to match up very well against Oregon.
14. Southern Cal: A year ahead of schedule, Tim Floyd has his team in the Sweet 16.
15. Vanderbilt: It’s hard to imagine the Commodores hanging with beefy Georgetown.
16. Butler: It’s even harder to imagine the Bulldogs hanging with Florida for long.
Permalink | Comments (60) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley
Tourney always full of surprise and emotion
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Chicago — If we ever wondered why it is we pay rapt attention to this silly little tournament, the answer could be found in Lon Kruger’s eyes. Normally the stoic’s stoic, Kruger was listening to his son describe how it felt to lead Dad’s latest team to an improbable berth in the Sweet 16, and suddenly Dad’s eyes were all misty.
And there it was yet again, the reason we keep watching games at this time of year, a reason that goes beyond which teams we like and which others we happened to pick in the office pool. We watch the NCAA tournament because we get to see strong men cry.
“It’s a basketball game,” said Lon Kruger after his son Kevin had scored 16 points and UNLV had toppled Wisconsin, a No. 2 seed, here Sunday, “and it’s quickly forgotten by most people. But those who went through it, they’ll remember it, and they’ll remember it with a smile.”
Lon Kruger coached the Atlanta Hawks in a previous life, and even as he was throwing body and soul into that thankless job he would speak wistfully of the college game, saying that for all the NBA had to offer, the pros could offer nothing to compare to the Big Dance. And now he was here again, dancing (figuratively if not literally) still, dancing with his son as his point guard and a once-proud program feeling proud again.
“This is pretty good,” Kruger said. “This is pretty special.”
This tournament always is. The first round might have generated fewer upsets this year, but what other sporting event can match the series of riveting games that turned Round 2 into consecutive days of upheaval and uplift?
Xavier fell a free throw shy of felling the No. 1 team in both polls. Plodding Purdue played the reigning champs off their famous feet for 35 minutes. Two teams from the football-mad Volunteer State took down higher seeds. Indiana managed 13 points in a half and still fought UCLA to the wire. Southern Cal, which figures to have the best freshman of next season in O.J. Mayo, ousted Texas, which had the best freshman of any season.
Butler is still around. Southern Illinois is, too. Memphis and Pittsburgh, teams everybody always expects to go away early, haven’t gone away yet. North Carolina and Georgetown are the lone representatives remaining from their prestigious leagues, while Oregon is one of three still going from the Pac-10. (The SEC, considered the ultimate football league, likewise has three teams remaining in the ultimate basketball event.)
And then, just to complete the jolts, the Krugers and the Runnin’ Rebels came to the heart of Big Ten country and outwrestled the brawny Badgers. The decisive surge came when Kevin Kruger, who’d missed all eight of his shots against Georgia Tech on Friday, made three treys in the span of four possessions to pull UNLV from three points down to five points ahead.
Said the younger Kruger, a grad student who transferred from Arizona State to play for his father: “If you go back and look at the Vegas papers, you’ll see I said I thought we had a chance to go to the tournament and make some noise. I thought we had a better team than a lot of teams out there, and now it’s coming to fruition.”
Some dreams do. Others don’t. That’s the beauty, and the cruelty, of March. In the second game here Sunday, Kansas made Kentucky, which holds seven NCAA titles, look like a team out of time. The Jayhawks won by 12 and seem as hot and as primed as any team in the field — Florida included, Carolina included.
Kansas figures to play in the Georgia Dome 12 days hence, but anyone who has ever watched an NCAA tournament knows form doesn’t always hold. (There are some NCAA tournaments where form almost never holds.) Nobody would have picked UNLV to get this far five months ago — indeed, the Rebels were tabbed sixth in the unassuming Mountain West — but here they are, still playing, still dancing, still dreaming the dream.
“It means so much,” Lon Kruger said, “to see so many people get to share in the thrill, to share in a positive experience like this.”
It means so much to all of us. It’s why we keep coming back. It’s why we can’t wait for what comes next. It’s why March, alone among the 12 months, is the one that never disappoints. Not once. Not ever.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley
Winner Johnson plays rough
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
In a flash, it was over. Not at the finish line on Sunday inside the Atlanta Motor Speedway, where Jimmie Johnson officially sprinted to his second victory in Henry County. Try against the unforgiving wall on turn 2 with three laps remaining in the Kobalt Tools 500.
It was over when Johnson outgunned, outsmarted and outmaneuvered Tony Stewart during a NASCAR version of the game “chicken” at 180-something mph down the thrilling stretch.
Oh, and you’ll find this surprising: Stewart wasn’t pleased in the aftermath. “Nobody likes to hit the wall. That’s pretty much a no-brainer, I think,” he said, sounding like his hero, A.J Foyt, when it comes to grumbling over tough losses. “I wish [Johnson] had of given me a little more room,” he said. And he went on to say that Johnson had the faster car and that he never kept his opponent from having room to race on the track.
Yeah, right. And neither Stewart nor Foyt would have done as much with the checkered flag nearly in sight.
To paraphrase Herman Edwards, YOU TRY TO WIN THE RACE.
That’s why Johnson is the only driver ever to finish in the top five in the standings during his opening five seasons. That’s why he won the title last season. That’s also why Johnson just won his second consecutive race this season despite all that tension flying around the garages, the pits, the grandstands and the race cars after the re-start with 11 laps to go.
“It was pretty intense,” said Johnson, chuckling, recalling how Stewart roared ahead on the subsequent green flag. Not only was Johnson in hot pursuit, but so were the accomplished Matt Kenseth and Juan Pablo Montoya, the master of open-wheel and Formula One racing who is resembling a veteran during his rookie season with the NASCAR folks. Jeff Burton joined the fun, too. Even so, during the final six laps, the Big Five became the Final Two.
There was Stewart weaving at full speed in an attempt to keep the charging Johnson from doing what Johnson eventually had to do, and that was he had TO TRY TO WIN THE RACE. Since Stewart mostly tried to stay high, Johnson kept drifting low in search of that moment.
When that moment finally came, with Johnson’s spotter yelling over the headphones for the driver to go for it. Well, you know the rest.
“I didn’t want to be on the inside of [Stewart], because I just felt it was a harder row to hoe, but I didn’t have any options, and we were running out of laps,” Johnson said. “Tony had a good run coming off the outside, and when I heard [from the spotter] that he was there, coming, it was too late for me to adjust.”
Seconds later, Johnson “apologized” to Stewart for his actions.
That was nice. It’s just that no apology was necessary. From the smooth beginning to the hectic end, this was a race with so few mishaps (six caution flags for 27 laps, mostly due to debris on the track) that Montoya continued to marvel at “how much room” drivers give each other on the Nextel Cup circuit.
Stewart gets it, by the way. He added upon reflection, “We’re both racing hard with three laps to go, and you don’t know if his spotter told him he was clear, so he just kept coming.” There also was this from Johnson, still hyped about 45 minutes after the race: “I can’t say that I’ve driven a race car that hard before.”
He hadn’t a choice.
Permalink | Comments (23) | Categories: Terence Moore
Lehtonen finally arrives for Thrashers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Having had the fortune of coaching one of the greatest goalies in NHL history with Colorado, the Thrashers’ Bob Hartley realized that Patrick Roy possessed at least one thing Kari Lehtonen lacked at this time of the year: a résumé.
Talent has never been the issue with Lehtonen. Durability, focus, toughness — those were the questions. He had never been the difference down the stretch of a season. He had never been in a playoff game. He had never really been “The Guy.” He was a blank page.
Yes. Emphasis on “was.”
The Thrashers defeated Buffalo, the best team in the Eastern Conference, for the second time this season Sunday. That says something about the team. But, more importantly, it says something about Lehtonen.
This time of year, it’s about goaltending. Great teams make great playoff runs because of one guy. Or they implode for the same reason.
The Thrashers woke up this morning with an unusual feeling of comfort. Their leads have ballooned to six points in the Southeast Division over Tampa Bay and 10 points over the first non-playoff team (New York Islanders) in the Eastern Conference.
How did they get here? It’s not hard to figure out. The pre-deadline trades certainly strengthened and solidified this team. (Three of their goals in Sunday’s 4-3 overtime win were scored by newcomers: Keith Tkachuk, Alexei Zhitnik, Eric Belanger.)
But in hockey, it always starts in net. The trades are inconsequential if Lehtonen isn’t showing a toughness and resiliency that wasn’t always obvious in his young career. The uncertainty led Hartley and goaltending coach Steve Weeks to run him through an endurance test of 15 straight starts.
“We wanted him to get the message that he would be our guy,” Hartley said. “He’s never done it at the NHL level. You have to go through this once to know what it takes.”
Tkachuk scored the game-winner in overtime. But the Thrashers never get to that moment if Lehtonen doesn’t stop Buffalo’s Daniel Briere on a blast on the power play three minutes earlier. He made similar saves earlier in the game on Briere, Michael Ryan (twice) and Jason Pominville.
When Belanger gave the Thrashers a 2-1 lead, they were being outshot 18-8.
Lehtonen faced 38 shots Sunday. You would like that to be an aberration this time of year. It hasn’t been. Despite Hartley’s suggestion that shot totals are a little inflated, there was nothing cheap about the Sabres’ scoring chances.
From Lindy Ruff, Buffalo’s coach: “If you look at the chances we created and the ones we gave up — we didn’t give up much.”
Neither did Lehtonen.
He is 7-2 in his past nine starts. In the past seven, he has faced shot totals of 36, 40, 35, 39, 33, 36, 38. But he has allowed only 16 goals in 257 shots (.938 save percentage), and opponents have scored only three of 32 power-plays (a kill-rate of 90.6 percent). The Sabres went scoreless on five power plays.
If nothing else, they did find the key to scoring on Lehtonen: First, you knock him unconscious.
Buffalo tied it, 3-3, on a rebound off the back boards by Derek Roy. But Lehtonen was face down and woozy at the time, having been hit on the side of the head (or mask) on a point shot by Henrik Tallinder.
“I was out just long enough for them to score,” Lehtonen said.
“I was just a little dizzy. I saw the puck go in and I was so mad. It was a lucky break for them. After 15 or 20 seconds, I started to feel better. But I still feel a little weird.”
The Thrashers will take this kind of weird. Lehtonen, Hartley said, is “in a zone” now. The goalie said he has “felt a spark in my play” ever since a recent visit by his parents from Finland.
“Even when they left, I’ve been able to keep the same feeling,” he said.
If this was all about mom and dad, the Thrashers would have handcuffed Martti and Marja Lehtonen to a lamp post. Their son has grown up. He has grown into being the difference. And when the playoffs get here, we won’t have to wonder.
Permalink | Comments (50) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Tubby knows who he is
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Chicago — Here’s what the bashers don’t understand: Tubby Smith doesn’t hear you and doesn’t really care what you think. He knows he can still coach. He knows he can always find suitable employment. He knows who he is.
A half-hour after Kentucky beat Villanova here Friday night, I asked Smith how much of the criticism actually registers. “You don’t want to give it any credence,” he said. “There’s always going to be critics.”
And what of his wife? (Donna Smith is an avid reader and Internet-surfer.) Does she absorb it all? “We’re too old for that crap,” he said. “If I were 25 or 30, it’d bother me. But when you’re 55 …”
He looked up, almost defiant now. “I can always get a job. That’s one thing my dad told me: ‘Don’t ever worry about work.’ “And what did Guffrie Smith, a Maryland sharecropper who raised 17 children, mean by that? Said Tubby Smith, sixth of the 17: “It’s only the lazy people who have to worry about work.”
To judge from the clamor back in the Bluegrass, Smith should be a nervous wreck. His Wildcats, who lost 13 games last season, have lost 11 this time and will be a massive underdog against Kansas today. His athletics director, the mealy-mouthed Mitch Barnhart, issued a statement last month so lacking in support of Smith that the AD felt moved this week to offer a “Tubby’s-our-coach” clarification. Then you saw the coach at work against Villanova, and you saw a man who seemed utterly relaxed.
He didn’t rip his jacket off, usually a signature move. He didn’t make any of those glowering Tubby Faces. Truth to tell, he spent the first four minutes sitting with his legs crossed. He knows who he is. He knows he can coach. (His team beat Villanova, didn’t it?) A few blowhards insisting he’s running their precious program into the ground won’t make him feel overmatched or inadequate or even unduly stressed.
To be fair, not all criticisms are groundless. Smith’s staff is among the weakest in the country. It was thought Tubby would hire new assistants after last season — Georgia Tech’s Charlton Young was believed to be one of the possibilities — but he wound up settling for a strength coach and for bringing back Shawn Finney, who’d been fired at Tulane, as director of basketball operations. And at the start against Villanova, the incompetence of Smith’s aides showed yet again.
Chief assistant David Hobbs identified Dwight Perry, as opposed to his cousin Bobby Perry, as a starter in the official scorebook. Thus did the nation’s winningest program open the 2007 NCAA tournament with a walk-on in its first five. (Dwight Perry was ordered to foul immediately so he could be substituted, and he dutifully complied.) “A little embarrassing,” Smith conceded. “But I couldn’t even read what was in the book.”
Because Smith doesn’t care much for recruiting, he needs stronger assistants who’ll do the heavy lifting. Two years ago, we had this conversation:
Me: “You know, I’m from Maysville (Ky.), and I’m still upset you didn’t recruit Chris Lofton.”
Smith: “Why didn’t you say something?”
The greater point is that Smith needs people around him who’ll say something, not just yes-men happy to be sitting by the eminent coach’s side. The greater point is that Kentucky shouldn’t have to settle for lesser talent on an annual basis. (Besides the dauntless Lofton, the Wildcats also passed on Corey Brewer, who’s the best all-around player on Florida, the nation’s best team.) As clever as Smith is — and at Xs and Os, he’s among the very best — he can’t override the sort of resource imbalance he faces against Florida and will face against Kansas.
But here’s what even his supporters (and there are, contrary to popular belief, more than a few of those) don’t fully grasp: Tubby Smith likes doing things his way. He was taking teams (Tulsa, Georgia) to the Sweet 16 before he arrived in Lexington, and if he decides to leave for a more welcoming climate he’ll win big there, too.
He knows who he is — a smart man, a successful man, as decent a man as there is in his cutthroat industry. He knows he can always find another job. What the bashers don’t understand is that Kentucky, for all its hubris, might never find another Tubby Smith.
Permalink | Comments (37) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley
Houston begins its Rocket countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Kissimmee, Fla. — You won’t find Roger Clemens live and in person in this cow town, where the Houston Astros spend the spring. Check the PGA Tour and it’s likely he’ll be playing in the pro-am, the Bob Hope, the Pebble Beach, and this past week under Arnold Palmer’s own label at Bay Hill. While major league players are sweating out offseason impurities under Marine conditions, “Rocket” - as Phil Garner addresses him - does it in country club style.
Clemens has his own spring conditioning routine, and it doesn’t include spring training, as you and I know it. He has made it a custom lately to come strolling in sometime in May, not plump and out of shape, but ready for foxhole duty. And how does that go over with a major league manager?
Well, when Garner became manager of the Astros, it went this way. “When I first got there, Rocket came in and handed me this long sheet of paper filled out with his program. I put it aside and never looked at it until one of my coaches said, ‘Did you see Rocket’s schedule?’
“I hadn’t, so I took a look at it. It was an itemized schedule of everything, workouts, throwing days, starts, the whole thing for almost the whole season. So I asked him about it, and what if I thought some of it ought to be changed. He said he’d change it, no problem. It wasn’t a demand schedule, it was just how programmed he is. I made a few changes and he went right along with it. I’m not crazy about the ‘freedom’ clause in his contract, but he has never taken advantage of it.”
It’s a most unusual arrangement. Clemens has been with the Astros three years, but you don’t find his name on the roster, nor his record in the press guide. He is as free as a free agent can be, and the presumption is that sometime in May he’ll check in, program in hand, and be ready to pitch.
He and Andy Pettitte came to Houston in sort of a package arrangement, and when Pettitte defected to the Yankees this year, the question arose about Clemens’ direction. “I’ll see what happens sometime in May,” he told an Orlando columnist.
“Is that what he said?” Garner asked. And being assured that it was, Garner must have had a comfortable glow light up his body. And why such an oddball way of going about it?
“I think it’s because he doubts he can go a full season anymore, so he doesn’t want to run out of gas,” Phil (once known as “Scrap Iron” as a player) said.
And yet he pitched the last three innings of that 18-inning game when the Astros beat the Braves in the deciding game of the playoffs two seasons ago. “You know something?” Phil said. “He’d have gone six or seven if we’d needed him. He’s that kind of team player.”
They are a sort of odd couple, Garner and Clemens. Garner is Smokey Mountain Tennessee all the way, son of a minister and straight as an arrow. Clemens is classic Texan, athletically handsome and muscled for heavy duty. Under these unusual conditions you might suspect some kind of smoldering crossfire just waiting to surface. Check the thought.
“Rocket is so great with kids,” Phil said. “He gets out there and throws batting practice to them until they run out of steam. Once some of the kids sort of tapped the ball back to him, and he said, ‘is that all you’ve got?’ Then they loosened up and started swinging. He’ll work himself until he’s dripping with sweat.”
And through all this, you can see that Garner is looking forward to May. No matter how it may come across to some doubters, “Rocket” and “Scrap Iron” have become a pretty good team as Astros.
“I’ll say this to you,” Phil said, “he is a dream to have on this team.”
Clemens has won 348 games, eighth all time, and the Astros are waiting for him to add to it. The Hall of Fame door is open, and his reservation has been made.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Jackets’ skill, effort can’t meet when it matters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Chicago — The talent didn’t fit, so this is the obit. Georgia Tech had enough good players to go a long way this month, but it was always a mismatched set. And as the Yellow Jackets were being outfought by UNLV at the end Friday, it was clear Paul Hewitt had developed, not by design but by necessity, a two-platoon system.
He had his “skill” guys, and he had his “effort” guys. But not enough of the latter guys were skilled enough, and not enough of the former could be counted on to give a consistent effort. In Hewitt’s incisive post-mortem, he conceded his Jackets had become exactly what he didn’t want them to be — “a feel-good team.”
Feel-good teams look great when they’re making shots and running free, but when the feeling fades (and it always does) such assemblages get frustrated and let the details slide. “When you’re scouting, you like to sniff out teams that exhibit some of that ‘feel-good,’ ” Hewitt said, “and we had some of that in the first half — the bickering. I’m disappointed. I thought we had gotten past it.”
But then he looked up and it was 11-3 and 22-10 and 29-15, and now Tech was chasing yet another game and Hewitt was having to deploy exotic combinations — for long stretches he had starting guards Javaris Crittenton and Anthony Morrow sit while Mario West and D’Andre Bell, two willing defenders, dragged the Jackets back — and such was the force of the Jackets’ rally that it seemed they were going to pull this one out. Only they couldn’t.
The same offensive rebounds that fueled Tech’s comeback undid the Jackets in the final two minutes. (The Rebels had five on the game’s two decisive possessions.) Said Jeremis Smith: “Rebounding is all about will, and they had a little more will.”
Said Morrow: “We got out-toughed. They showed a lot of toughness at the end. We’ve got to come up with those rebounds.”
Said West: “In a very close game that was going back and forth, it was little things — boxing out, coming up with loose balls, being disciplined on defense — that cost us the game.”
That’s the trouble with talent, young talent especially. Attention to detail suffers because talented young guys always figure they’ll override a lack of fundamentals with their surplus of aptitude. Alas, the two most talented young Jackets — Crittenton and Thaddeus Young — took 23 shots between them Friday and managed only 16 points, and UNLV was allowed to take a lasting lead with 71 seconds left on, of all things, a layup off an inbounds pass.
“We didn’t do what we should have done [this season],” Morrow said. “This is a life lesson. We lost this game … with all we could have done.”
Said Young: “We lost games we weren’t supposed to lose. Good teams don’t lose games they aren’t supposed to lose.”
For all their assets, these Jackets will be remembered as being closer to mediocre than to good. They were gifted enough to beat North Carolina and Memphis but so unsound they lost a dozen games. Three years ago Tech played for the national championship because Hewitt had a bunch of effort guys who were just skilled enough. This time there was no happy medium. This time they couldn’t even get past an opponent that made only 31.7 percent of its shots in Round 1.
“We had a lot of talent,” Crittenton said, “but sometimes we just didn’t listen to the coaching staff. We didn’t do everything in our power.”
In the grand scheme, they didn’t come all that close. One-and-done in the ACC tournament, and now one-and-done in the Big Dance. Assuming Crittenton and Young return — and there’s no good reason to think they won’t — big things will be expected next season. But teams that do big things must first master the little things, and these Jackets never quite could. Thus does the feel-good team come home feeling bad.
“It wasn’t fun,” Crittenton said. “Any time you lose, it’s never fun.”
Permalink | Comments (47) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Holyfield a shadow (boxer) of former self
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
The latest comeback has seen Evander Holyfield work his way down the Texas food chain. First came Dallas. Then San Antonio. Now Corpus Christi. Next stop: Amarillo?
Just as well. Holyfield has shrunk in stature, even relative to the junkyard that is boxing in general and the heavyweight division in particular.
Corpus Christi? Perfect. This is Holyfield today. He fights nobodies. He fights in dust bowls. He fights for almost nothing. Or less.
Seriously. If Holyfield doesn’t take a $250,000 loss by fighting Vinny Maddalone on Saturday night, it will be a step forward financially. He was supposed to receive a $2 million purse to fight Fres Oquendo last November in San Antonio.
“I haven’t seen a penny,” he said by phone.
He was supposed to get $250,000 for training expenses. What happened to that?
“My manager took off with it,” he said.
You want to make a comeback in boxing, there’s a price. It starts with a swan dive into the sport’s cesspool.
The aforementioned manager was somebody named George Hutson from Houston. He worked his way into Holyfield’s good graces before the comeback fight against Jeremy Bates in Dallas. This same George Hutson was very eager to hand me his fresh new “Real Deal Events LLC” business card. He told me all of the potential bidders to host Holyfield’s next bout. Europe. China. Neptune.
I tried to phone Hutson Thursday. The office number was disconnected. The cell number was disconnected. There was a listing for a George Hutson in Houston. I dialed. But the man who answered assured me he wasn’t the one I was looking for. I believed him. I’m a sucker.
Holyfield says it was Hutson who convinced him to sign a deal as co-promoter with Murad Muhammad, making him financially liable for the card in San Antonio.
“I told George Hutson, ‘I know I’m a co-promoter but I’m also a fighter. I have to have a guarantee,’ ” Holyfield said. “Now we just have to wait and see what happens. I’m trying to get this fight out of the way first because I didn’t want to spend time going back and forth to court.”
Holyfield also claims Hutson pocketed the training expenses that Muhammad gave the manager. He blames Hutson for poisoning the relationship with Fox Sports Net, which was a partner in the last two fights but not this one. He says Hutson misrepresented himself as an attorney.
Holyfield says he learned all this three weeks before the Oquendo fight. So he fired Hutson. The subsequent unraveling of the promotion led to sponsors pulling out and the promotion taking a financial bath. It didn’t help, of course, that Holyfield’s name alone just doesn’t sell like it used to.
Which us brings to Saturday’s fight. The only reason it has received any attention is because Holyfield has been linked to a steroids and HGH investigation. Yes, he is 2-0 since a two-year layoff. But he knocked out an insurance agent (Bates). His reflexes looked shot against Oquendo (12-round decision).
Holyfield should win Saturday, but look who he’s fighting. Maddalone is a former minor-league pitcher and Tough Man competitor. He is a member of the Teamsters Local 282 as a truck driver. He is 27-3, but only eight of his 27 wins have come over opponents with winning records. And those eight — nobody has heard of them, either.
Maddalone did beat somebody named Shannon Miller. I’m assuming it wasn’t the former gymnast, because, like, she’s 5 feet 1, and the fight went to the fifth round.
Holyfield isn’t even the biggest sports story in Corpus Christi this week. The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders are in the NCAA tournament today. Holyfield gave them a pep talk during a rally Tuesday.
The Islanders play Wisconsin today. Holyfield wants to win back all of the heavyweight belts. Even against the defective heavyweight field, I think I like the Islanders’ chances better.
Asked what a win Saturday would lead to, Holyfield said: “There’s nothing certain. But, you know, if people are looking to make some money, they might be interested in fighting me.”
He may want to check the freshness date on that quote.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Jeff Schultz
Jackets eager to seize an opportunity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Chicago — The path isn’t all that different: Start in a chilly Midwestern city off Lake Michigan, advance to St. Louis, finish beneath a big Southern dome. The team, however, is.
Georgia Tech has one man who worked a minute in the stirring run to the 2004 Final Four in San Antonio, and that’s exactly how much time Mario West saw in the six games of that tournament — one minute in Round 1 against Northern Iowa. “It was a while back,” West conceded Thursday.
So far back he couldn’t recall the minute? Hardly. It came at the end of the first half, West being inserted for the same reason he’s inserted now — defense. Did Northern Iowa score in that minute? No, West said. And was he the epitome of cool in his NCAA debut? Hardly.
“I was kind of running around,” he said. “I felt lost. I had so much adrenaline, a lot of energy.”
All the Jackets players did then. And, if West is any judge, all of them do now. “It’s kind of like deja vu,” he said. “We’re very excited. It’s tournament time right now.”
On the dais at the United Center, West threw his arms around Jeremis Smith and Javaris Crittenton, who were seated alongside. “I’m happy to be here with this group of guys,” he said. “We’ve worked really hard.”
The feeling persists that Tech is about to play its best basketball of a curious season. The Jackets spent January digging themselves a hole and February clambering out, and just the realization that they’ve reached the Big Dance — something last season’s team didn’t do, and something Chris Bosh’s and Jarrett Jack’s team of 2002-03 couldn’t do — could have a galvanizing effect. The pressure’s off. An opportunity is at hand.
West again: “We’re a very confident team.”
The Jackets play UNLV today, and Tech is in the curious position of being the lower seed but the betting-line favorite. (Since the lines are made in Las Vegas, shouldn’t that tell us something?) The Rebels’ best victories have come against BYU and Texas Tech, which were seeded No. 8 and No. 10 in this tournament; Tech has beaten North Carolina and Memphis, a No. 1 and a No. 2.
If the Jackets play any defense — and there’s no reason such a premise should be iffy at this time of the year — they should win today. They have better players and just as good a coach. (Lon Kruger could do nothing with the Hawks, but he gets the most out of collegians wherever he goes.) Measuring just on talent, these Jackets are better than the ones who played for the national championship three years ago. But that team had something this team has yet to find: It had a toughness of spirit, a consistency of effort. That team would never have yielded 114 points to Wake Forest in March.
That said, this team has a rallying point that the 2003-04 Jackets didn’t, a rallying point no other team in this tournament possesses. Everyone else is playing to get to Atlanta. Win four games and Georgia Tech will be playing in its hometown.
Do the Jackets dare to dream such a sweet dream? “We’re trying to take it one game at a time,” said Crittenton, already an old pro with the clichés. “You can’t skip steps. UNLV is a great team.”
Paul Hewitt, ever the raging optimist, conceded he’d given the matter some thought, even if he hadn’t discussed it with his players. “Every time you’d drive by the Georgia Dome, you’d think, ‘Boy, that’s a natural possibility,’ ” Hewitt said. “But now that we’re in the tournament, it’s the furthest thing from our mind.”
It’s the furthest thing right now, but if the Jackets beat UNLV and should topple Wisconsin on Sunday, the scenario will seem somewhat more tangible. Win twice this weekend and Georgia Tech will be, figuratively and literally, halfway home.
Permalink | Comments (40) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Dogs eager about NIT; fans are not
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Athens — This is the NIT. It’s cute. It has its own little history. But it’s a postseason tournament in the sense that a potato chip is a vegetable.
This is the NIT. It starts with 32 teams. Then four get to go to New York. Then four battle to be No. 1. You just have to get past the fact that No. 1 is really No. 66.
This is the NIT. It goes way past that whole no respect thing. There was Georgia, opening play in the Step Tournament on Wednesday night. The game was on campus. The problem? Everybody else normally on campus was on spring break. Should’ve moved the game to Panama City.
“We were just happy anybody was in the stands,” Levi Stukes said.
This is the NIT. It’s important for a team to act like it wants to be here, because when it’s clear it would rather be on the Panhandle, it’s painfully obvious to the, well, dozens of fans who possibly accidentally stumbled through the turnstiles.
Credit the Bulldogs for the “want” factor Wednesday. They led Fresno State by as many as 20 points and won relatively easily, 88-78. Credit the senior, Stukes, for playing this game as if it could be his last. He scored 30 points.
Fresno State also did what it could to make this entertaining. Its first seven field goals were 3-pointers. It fired 40 3-point attempts (making 18). So if that exhibition and the empty seats gave an ABA feel to the game, it’s no wonder. All we needed was a red, white and blue ball.
But this is the NIT, and the NIT wants teams like Georgia. Not far removed from the post-Harrick, punchline era, the Dogs certainly deserved more than participation trophies and juice boxes for what they accomplished this season. To their credit, they treated this game as a reward, not a plague.
“Guys just want to play because it’s basketball,” guard Sundiata Gaines said. “Anybody would rather play any game than be at home and watch other teams play. Since we can’t win the NCAA championship, the next best thing is the NIT, other than the conference tournament. You’re still on national television, and you still have a chance to prove yourself.”
This is the NIT. The “want” is not a given. Some schools can’t get past their own glorious NCAA history or the feeling that they were snubbed by the selection committee. So they arrive at this tournament (maybe) thinking, “We’re too good for this.” And they play like they’re actually not good enough.
Georgia could have fallen victim to that. In addition to the school being on spring break — even the football team stopped practicing! Aaaagh! — most area public schools also are out. Coach Dennis Felton prepared his team for an “intimate” crowd. (For what it’s worth, officials announced the attendance at 2,031. Somebody was seeing double.)
“There’s not a lot of people left in the community right now,” Felton said. “So I told them to expect a small crowd and that we needed to create our own energy. [As for] the crowd, I wasn’t surprised or disappointed. They were having a blast. They just enjoyed one more chance to see us play.”
Now they get to play again. The last time the Dogs won a postseason game was five years ago today — an opening- round NCAA tourney win over Murray State. Then came a second-round loss to Southern Illinois. Then came the circus. Tony Cole. The “Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball.” The NCAA. Probation. Goodbye, Jim Jr. Goodbye, Jim Sr. Hello, 8-20.
Felton has brought them back. There’s no telling how far the Dogs get this tournament. They are running on fumes minus Mike Mercer and Albert Jackson.
But they’re still going, and they want what’s next. Even in the NIT, that counts for something.
Permalink | Comments (34) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
Left-handed catcher almost overlooked
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Kissimmee, Fla. — This was repaying a visit to the Houston Astros in their new spit-and-shine $20 million playpen. The evening before, the Astros had turned beastial at Lake Buena Vista, and before you could say Manuel Alcides Molina Acosta, the rookie from Panama had been roughed up beyond recognition. The Astros feasted on Braves pitching for nine runs in the ninth inning. That did serious damage to the Braves’ ERA, but there was good news. It was Chuck James’ time to start Wednesday.
He had been a more or less emergency starter since June of last season, with Horacio Ramirez and John Thomson on the rocks, and Tim Hudson searching for what he left behind in Oakland. James’ debut on June 25 was a headliner. He shut down Tampa Bay on two hits in eight innings, and over the rest of the season only one National League pitcher won more games. James won 11, John Smoltz won a dozen.
James sort of popped up under the very nose of the Braves, out of Mableton, not necessarily noted as a hotbed of baseball talent. When Al Goetz, the Braves scout with an eye for the same — he also signed Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann — came across James, he said to a coach in the neighborhood, “How did we miss this guy?”
Said the coach, “You people don’t scout left-handed catchers, do you?”
Turns out that when he wasn’t pitching, James was catching in high school. Anything for the team.
He lasted until the 20th round in the 2002 draft, but as crazy kids will do, he almost blew the career. Kids jumped off a storage house into a swimming pool for fun in Mableton, and one day when it was Chuck’s turn, the roof caved under his feet, and, as he said, “I hit concrete instead of water.”
Both wrists were broken.
On another boyish adventure, he was bitten by a copperhead, a nasty-tempered poisonous reptile. He was nowhere close to a hospital, and after an hour, he said, “I decided I wasn’t going to die, so I didn’t do anything.”
His style has been likened to Tom Glavine’s, for neither of them arouses a speed gun. “His delivery is an easy one and the ball jumps out at the hitter the last few feet,” manager Bobby Cox said. “It’s what we call sneaky.”
He’s a delight to watch, relaxed, unhurried, with a habit of throwing the pitch where he aims it. He couldn’t have happened along at a more convenient time with all the pitching casualties that have developed. The big blow struck the other day when Mike Hampton pulled an oblique muscle, which, I suppose, we all have, but not one that gets a lot of headlines among all the tendons and groins and hamstrings housing inside us. And he did it in the batting cage, not pitching. He hasn’t been able to throw a payroll pitch in nearly two years.
So now James moves up a notch to third place in the starting order behind Smoltz and Hudson, and he’s still the same even-keel kid from Mableton. The Astros got to him for a couple of runs in the third inning, and in the fourth it was a .059 hitter who did him damage. Chris Burke is a name that haunts the Braves in their dreams, the kid who hit the 18th-inning home run that took them out of the playoffs two years ago. Down here, he hasn’t been able to steal a hit, his average becoming embarrassing, and he appeared ready to catch the next coach to Round Rock, their farm club.
But there was life yet. Burke bounced a line drive off James’ glove, thrown up in defense, for a single, then opened the fourth inning with a line drive home run, and the Osceola Stadium crowd was in his corner again. Not that James came to Kissimmee on a mercy mission, but he could find solace in that Burke emerged from the misery of a .059 spring, and Chuck will live to win again.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Four-casting the NCAA tourney
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Four burning questions
Is Nevada actually a major now? The mid-major Top 25 overseen by CollegeInsider.com doesn’t even consider the Wolf Pack.
Is Tubby Smith leaving Kentucky? AD Mitch Barnhart issued a “clarification” this week to his previous statement of non-support.
Is Jim Boeheim back to being surly again? He surely has cause given the unbelievable snub Syracuse just absorbed.
How many Texas A&Ms are in this thing, anyway? Two. The one from College Station has a chance. The one from Corpus Christi doesn’t.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageFour upsets almost everybody is picking
Old Dominion over Butler: Colonial mojo undoes even the team from “Hoosiers.”
Winthrop over Notre Dame: Irish didn’t seem too pleased to be shipped to Spokane.
Virginia Commonwealth over Duke: Rams’ Eric Maynor will be best player on the floor.
Albany over Virginia: Great Danes led UConn by 12 with 11-1/2 to play in Round 1 last year.
Four less-hyped (but still possible) upsets
Miami (Ohio) over Oregon: Ducks weren’t so mighty in February, if you recall.
Holy Cross over Southern Illinois: Salukis don’t score much, rendering every game close.
Oral Roberts over Washington State: Kansas lost two home games; one was to ORU.
Wright State over Pitt: Raiders beat Butler twice, making them a scary No. 14.
Four best freshmen (non-guards)
Kevin Durant, Texas: The best freshman ever. Better than Ewing. Better than Carmelo.
Greg Oden, Ohio State: Having use of both hands makes a bit of a difference, huh?
Brandan Wright, North Carolina: He’s a more dynamic Sam Perkins, and that’s a mouthful.
Thaddeus Young, Georgia Tech: Looking more like a one-year-and-done player with every game.
Four best freshmen (guards)
D.J. Augustin, Texas: What Gerry McNamara was to Carmelo, Augustin is to Durant.
Mike Conley Jr., Ohio State: The point guard is the Buckeyes’ real MVP, not Oden.
Stephen Curry, Davidson: Dell Curry’s son was No. 2 (to Durant) among frosh scorers.
Javaris Crittenton, Georgia Tech: Drives harder than any guard since … Jarrett Jack, maybe?
Four most tiresome ‘storylines’
Coach against pupil: This was worn out when it was Dean against Roy. Somehow Izzo against Crean doesn’t have the same sizzle.
Coach against former employer: Illinois’ Bruce Weber could go against Southern Illinois in Round 2. All Carbondale is abuzz.
Coach against alma mater: What’s Ben Howland going to say to his Bruins: “Since I went to Weber State, I’m rooting against you today”?
Coach against team based in former hometown: So Lon Kruger drove past Georgia Tech on his way to work. He didn’t work here long.
Four least-neutral neutral sites
Wisconsin in Chicago: Neighboring Badgers played the Big Ten tournament on the same floor.
Louisville in Lexington: Think Rick Pitino might remember anything about Rupp Arena?
North Carolina in Winston-Salem: Heels have more fans in the Triad than Wake Forest does.
UCLA in California: Bruins start in Sacramento before moving to San Jose. Hooray for Hollywood.
Four coaches apt to have another job next season
Billy Gillispie, Texas A&M: Was believed to be atop Arkansas’ wish list and will be atop a dozen others
Chris Lowery, Southern Illinois: Carbondale, the new cradle of coaches. First Bruce Weber, then Matt Painter, now Lowery.
Jay Wright, Villanova: Is rumored to be headed for the Philadelphia 76ers, which might not be a good thing for him.
Gregg Marshall, Winthrop: If memory serves, he had a new job last year but pulled a Cremins and jilted the College of Charleston.
Four “dangerous” teams that aren’t
Arizona: Has scads of talent, yes. Has no clue how to apply it.
Arkansas: Most controversial invitee since Georgia made it at 16-14 in 2001.
Vanderbilt: Enters off consecutive losses to Arkansas, which took some doing.
Stanford: Cardinal are a year away and will open play three time zones from home.
The four regionals in descending order of difficulty
East: Georgetown seeded No. 2? Texas No. 4? A brutal path for North Carolina.
West: Both Kansas and UCLA are capable of winning the whole shebang.
South: Region’s makeup depends on whether Memphis plays up to its No. 2 seed.
Midwest: Is anybody picking against Florida here? Hello? Is this microphone on?
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Wilkins blazed trail for today’s migrant talent
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Are you wondering why it is easier for the first time in 10, 20, 30 years to do your income taxes than to fill out your brackets for March Madness?
Consider this:
Kevin Durant is from Baltimore, but he plays for Texas. Chris Lofton is from Mason County, Ky., but he plays for Tennessee. Greg Oden and Mike Conley are from Indianapolis, but they play for Ohio State. D.J. White is from Tuscaloosa, but he plays for Indiana. Tyler Hansbrough is from Poplar Bluff, Mo., but he plays for North Carolina. Terrence Williams is from Seattle, but he plays for Louisville.
Then there is Winthrop, the epitome of what is happening these days as the most unlikely of No. 11 seeds. The Eagles’ nest is somewhere in the nothingness of Rock Hill, S.C. Still, their key guys are from New Zealand (Craig Bradshaw), as in kiwis, and Kingston, N.C., (Michael Jenkins) as in why didn’t such a talented guard stay around Tobacco Road?
You can blame the basketball gifted going from here to everywhere on a rapidly expanding mobile society. Well, that, along with cable television willing to show anything that dribbles to make it easier for the folks to see you back home. You also have the epidemic of AAU programs that expose players to different regions while giving coaches a chance to recruit multiple youngsters in one place.
As a result, you haveyoungsters willing to leave time zones and comfort zones. Which means the NCAA tournament never has been more stuffed with quality teams. Which means your brackets will be a mess by Monday.
Which means Dominique Wilkins was a fluke for his time.
Wilkins had the audacity during the Neanderthal Days of college basketball in the late 1970s to take his considerable skills to another state after high school. More shocking, he left the hoops-laden hills of North Carolina for Georgia, where basketball is just something to ignore between the end of football season and the start of spring practices.
“The majority of the guys in those days went to school in the state that they grew up in, and you call tell by those old Kentucky teams,” Wilkins said. “You’re talking about guys like Mel Turpin, [Dirk] Minniefield, all of those guys. Some of those Kentucky players were from other parts of the country, but a lot of them were from the Kentucky area.”
More than half of them. Now the Kentucky team in this year’s NCAA tournament has nobody — that’s right, nobody — on its current roster from a state that likes to suggest it invented hoops.
Elsewhere, Florida is the defending champion, and there have been more than a few decent athletes from that state (Deion Sanders, Chris Everett, Gary Sheffield, Michael Irvin, Tracy McGrady, Chris DiMarco, Warren Sapp). Even so, among the starters for the Gators, Corey Brewer is from Portland, Tenn., Joakim Noah is from New York, Al Horford is from Grand Ledge, Mich., and Lee Humphrey is from Maryville. Tenn. Only Taurean Green is from Florida (Fort Lauderdale).
That’s opposed to those Neanderthal Days, when the majority of Wilkins’ contemporaries rarely left for distant basketball lands. Charles Barkley went from Leeds, Ala., to Auburn. Larry Bird went from French Lick, Ind. to Indiana University before settling at Indiana State. Ralph Sampson went from Harrisonburg, Va. to the University of Virginia.
Plus, you had Magic Johnson deciding that there was no place like home by remaining around Lansing to play at Michigan State. Not only that, you had Michael Jordan scooting across North Carolina from Wilmington to Chapel Hill.
“Everybody thought I was going to stay in state like James Worthy, and that we were going to North Carolina together, because we were in the same year (1979), which would have been one hell of a college team,” said Wilkins, chuckling at his understatement. “In hindsight, looking back on that, and it’s like, wow. It could have been me, Michael Jordan, Worthy, Jimmy Black, Sam Perkins. But at the last minute, I decided to go to Georgia.”
So Wilkins was a pioneer, with the slam-dunk and otherwise.
Permalink | | Categories: Final Four, Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Trust me: Gators can’t lose
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
With the start of the NCAA Tournament just a day away, let’s return to what I wrote in this space on February 28.
Why? It still applies.
My words then …
“The team to beat heading into March Madness hasn’t changed. Ignore the other stuff. Those three losses during its last four games. Shaky or no defense. Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers. Even so, you still have to take Florida to win the national championship in men’s basketball over everybody else. Here are the five reasons why: Joakim Noah, Taurean Green, Corey Brewer, Al Horford and Lee Humphrey. They were the starters when the Gators won it all last season, and they remain the starters today.”
Now that the NCAA Tournament brackets are out, Florida looks even more set to dribble deep into March as the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Regional. The Gators won’t have a tough go of it until a possible meeting with No. 2 seed Wisconsin in the regional finals.
Take Florida in that one.
Then the Gators would begin the Final Four in Atlanta against possibly UCLA, the No. 2 seed from the West Regional.
Go with Florida again.
In fact, until proved otherwise, go with Florida in the championship game against North Carolina, Ohio State, Central Connecticut State or whoever comes out of the other side of the bracket.
Go with Florida, period.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Spring ball sprouts hope for older trio
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — Ah, spring. The lulling sound of that dateline, though there’s not a cupful of water in sight. Once I spent spring training in Winter Garden, which was neither chilly nor heavily vegetated. Another time it was Homestead. Ugh!
You ask the guys who come here on business and it’s not where they are. It’s the pot of gold they’re after. These days, the contracts are all signed and the deal is cut for the headliners, the Joneses, Smoltz, McCann, Francoeur and John Schuerholz’s collection of closers. Bobby Cox has never felt so comfortable with his bullpen. Nor for that matter, with his employment. You’ve read that he plans to manage two more years, then ride off into the sunset.
He doesn’t sound too convinced. Sometimes they bounce it off the wall just to see how it sounds. Then Jack McKeon’s name came up. “You remember,” he was reminded, “Jack came off the farm and won a World Series at the age of 73,” and Bobby just grins.
Baseball isn’t an easy addiction to overcome, and the closer the time comes, the more desperate a guy gets. You’ve been reading about the exploits of Chuck James, Lance Cormier, Kelly Johnson, Martin Prado — he has the camp abuzz — and Scott Thorman, with first base yawning for him. (He looks more like a tight end, big and muscle-tough.) Well, let me tell you about three who were once younger Braves now back where they began. Funny, how guys will go back to the club that first signed them, as if they can reclaim the glow of youth.
Fernando Lunar first came to the Braves in 1994, a 16-year-old from Venezuela, a natural-born catcher. He looked as if he had been born catching. Now, if he could only hit. He was deployed all about the farm system, from Danville up to the Braves, where he went to bat 54 times and hit safely 10. He was traded to Baltimore, where he was an artist behind the bat, but not with it. He was set on the road again and bounced around until he hit rock bottom: Somerset (Mass.) in an independent league. He’s still a young man, as baseball goes, and he’ll get a look.
“I want to get him in a game,” Cox said. “I’m curious.”
Five years ago, Trey Hodges was a likely pitching prospect when he was brought up from Richmond. Out of LSU. Clever, not the hard-ball strikeout kind, but a pitcher who made what he had work. He had a good spring. He had starting potential, but something went wrong. Last season he disappeared from view, and later turned up pitching in the Far East. Now he’s back in his old comfort zone. He pitched two innings the other day, and nobody laid a bat on him. He looked like starting material once, but he’s starting all over again, and he’s still only 28 years old.
Now we come to Joe Winkelsas. You may not remember him. If he hadn’t been a Winkelsas, I probably wouldn’t. Joe is a right-handed pitcher — he has a left-handed personality, with all the quirks — who came to camp first in 1996, out of Elon College, so the book says. Joe has bounced around more than a pinball in one of those machines. He has made 18 team changes in his career, with one brief stop in Atlanta in his course of running the gamut of the system. His career with the Braves came to one-third of an inning. He spent the last month of the ‘06 season with Milwaukee.
Joe’s 33 now, and you probably won’t be seeing him at Turner Field this year. He must have felt like there was no place like where he started, and he’s back again.
And Fernando, Trey and Joe are just a few who look to the guys who gave them their first start to start over again.
Oh, I should have pointed out that while all the fuss is being made over the Japanese fireballer Daisuke Matsuzaka of the Red Sox, the Braves have not been left at the post. They have Jung Ji Cho, who was 4-2 at Danville two years ago, then came down wounded. But a guy with a 0.93 ERA is worth keeping around just to see.
Besides, he costs a heckuva lot less than Daisuke.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Stallone, injured Braves and BowserGate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN ….
10: Paul Hewitt is playing it right. Georgia Tech is in no position to complain about being a 10th seed. But after watching the ACC tournament, my question is: Who does Mike Krzyzewski have pictures of? Because that’s the only explanation for Duke getting a sixth seed.
9: One starting pitcher (Mike Hampton) is out two months after getting hurt swinging a bat. Another potential starter (Kyle Davies) is so wild that he must be throwing to a plate in Richmond. Chipper Jones already has a sprained ankle. When does Bobby Cox announce, “You know, I was going to wait two years to retire. But I just got this really cool deal on cruise tickets, and since I’m already down there in Florida - whoa, look at that time …”
8: Sylvester Stallone has been charged with importing “performance and image enhancing drugs” (48 vials of HGH) in Australia (from one of the best sites on the web: Deadspin.com). So far, there has been no uproar from Hollywood on bad actors compromising the integrity of B movies. But it makes you wonder how many more movies John Wayne could’ve made.
7: So in the latest chapter of BowserGate, police say that Johnathan Babineaux’s story about how his girlfriend’s bowser ended up dead is “inconsistent” with the evidence. I hate this legal details. Unfortunately, this is what happens when a dog is found in Gwinnett County and not Dade County.
6: The dog’s name, and I’m not making this up, was “Kilo.” What was second choice? Dime Bag? Quick Fix? Cheech? Chong? Particulates?
5: I understand from a business standpoint why the Thrashers will start selling playoff tickets Friday. But given the backdrop of the first six seasons, isn’t this a little like being the first developer to build condos near a fault line?
4: That said, OK: The Thrashers will make the playoffs. They have a good chance to win the division. The trades Don Waddell made at the deadline were just what this team needed and confirmed his existence — which, of course, differentiates Waddell from the rumor that is Billy Knight.
3: Viagra announced it has pulled its sponsorship of Major League Baseball. But commissioner Bud Selig downplayed the significance, saying it’s nothing a little vitamin E and five minutes on the Internet can’t fix.
2: I have thought long and hard about this and I can’t come up with one single reason why the Atlanta Spirit (Belkin or non-Belkin) would keep Knight. So I need your help bloggers. For just one moment, try to channel a deluded Knight-backer and provide me with one. The best answer wins a Speedy Claxton jersey (seldom used).
1: Florida, UCLA, North Carolina, Long Beach State (former campus home to Jerry Tarkanian, and me).
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Jeff Schultz
Horn has high hopes for Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Let’s reflect back to last November in the Georgia Dome, where the Falcons continued their free fall after dropping a second blowout in three months to the New Orleans Saints. I had a striking conversation with Joe Horn, the NFL receiver whose tongue always makes his world more tutti-frutti than vanilla.
My question at the time: Uh, what’s wrong with the Falcons?
Horn’s answer: “They’re not far away from where they should be, but they’re missing a couple of things.”
What things?
After easing into a smile, Horn replied softly, “I know, but I’m not telling.”
He just did. Not with his mouth, but with his feet. He left the Saints after seven years as a noted Falcons killer to become one of those “couple of things” that his previous victims needed. It doesn’t matter that his 35-year-old body has shown its age so much during the past two seasons that he has missed 11 games with groin and hamstring injuries. He nearly is better than what the Falcons have on the field as a wide receiver and in the locker room as a leader.
Thirty-seven receptions. That’s how many a healthy Michael Jenkins had last season to lead the Falcons’ sorry group of wide receivers. Thirty-five receptions. That’s how many a creaky Horn had last season while sharing duties with two of the league’s better wideouts.
Now if the physical that Horn took with the Falcons is accurate, this is a healthy Horn, which means Roddy White, Brian Finneran and Jenkins must become consistently good or risk getting embarrassed by an old man. Not that the old man isn’t into mentoring. Take, for instance, those two Saints victories over the Falcons last season by a composite score of 54-16. Even then, Horn stood on the Saints sideline and contemplated ways to enhance the games someday of White, Finneran, Jenkins and that No. 7 guy with the strong but erratic arm.
“I had caught passes from Michael Vick before in Hawaii [in the Pro Bowl], and I visualized a couple of times in those games last year [against the Falcons] what it would be like for me to be on the other side and to help those young cats and to give them some of my expertise,” Horn said recently from Tupelo, Miss., the hometown of his wife, Lacreshia. He spoke on his cellphone, presumably not the one he used as a prop after scoring a touchdown. “Oh, man. Playing with these guys [on the Falcons] instead of against them? I thought about all of that a few times.”
Those thoughts will turn into action for Horn, which brings us to his role in the locker room. No-nonsense safety Lawyer Milloy was a sufficient leader last season during his first year with the team. It’s just that Horn will expand that role from mono to stereo.
“I have high expectations of myself, and I want the guys around me to have those same high expectations of themselves, and I’m sure they will,” Horn said. “I’m not saying I’m coming in here to try to change everything around. This is a group thing, and everybody’s going to have to put in time and work to make everybody better overall.”
Before we conclude, let’s hear it from the man himself. I mean, you were one of those “couple of things” that you said the Falcons were missing, right?
“I still can’t tell you,” said Horn, chuckling. Then after a little prodding, he confessed. Boldly. “I’m absolutely one of those things,” Horn said. “Any sort of participation I have with this organization, I think I can put them to the next level. I’m going to go in, and I’m going to be Joe Horn. I’m going to talk to guys. I’m going to get into conversations to see what they’re talking about. I’m just going to be me.”
That’s a lot.
Permalink | Comments (46) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Anatomy of a Fiasco
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
This being the 20th anniversary of the Final Four Fiasco, I thought it might be helpful to offer some sort of explanation for late tuners-in. Here goes:
1. Why did you start this silly contest, anyway?
There were two flashpoints. First, after making several spectacularly wrong picks in 1987, I got a letter — no e-mail in those days — from a reader saying, “You obviously know nothing about basketball.” And then Gerry Overton, who was and is a member of our crack desk crew, said to me in passing: “I really haven’t followed college basketball this year, but it’s every red-blooded American’s duty to fill out a bracket.” And these two nuggets coalesced, if that’s the word, into an idea: If I know nothing, let’s see how much our red-blooded readers know.
2. Was it always called the Final Four Fiasco?
No. Like the Super Bowl, the name arrived a year or two after the event. An entrant wrote on the envelope, “It’s a fiasco!” And I, er, appropriated the term.
3. Why doesn’t the Fiasco work like other office pools, where the goal is to pick the national champ?
Because I’ve always believed the core of the tournament is the Final Four. It’s CBS hyping “the road to the Final Four.” It’s people asking, “Who’s your Final Four?” And also because I’ve always seen the Fiasco as two columns — one with me making my picks and asking for yours, and another with me interviewing the winner and asking why he/she picked the way he/she did. And, being blunt, I figured nobody would care about such a thing after the tournament was over. But leading into the Final Four, people might actually be interested.
4. Does anybody outside Atlanta pay attention to this contest?
I always assume it’s purely a local thing, but I’m often surprised. Brent Musburger, whom I hardly know, once told me, “I loved that story about the preacher and his grandson.” (Casey Skeen would have won the Fiasco one year but his grandfather, a local minister, crossed out one name — Duke, as I recall — and wrote in another — Georgetown, as I recall — before mailing the envelope.) The Associated Press picked up the news that Michael Stipe, the lead singer of R.E.M., entered one year and picked Tennessee-Chattanooga to reach the Final Four. And the British-based paper the Financial Times ran an article on office pools a few years ago and mentioned the Fiasco, saying that the winner got a lot of money.
5. Does the Fiasco winner get a lot of money?
No. The winner gets a sweatshirt.
6. Why a sweatshirt?
In the early days, the prizes were whatever I happened to have around the house — books, videos, T-shirts, basketballs, caps. (Dick Vitale was always a great source of freebies.) Finally I settled on the official Final Four sweatshirt because (a) it has something to do with the Final Four itself, and (b) it’s a NICE sweatshirt. Up to around $65 retail, I can attest.
7. Why no money?
Because I always wanted this to be a friendly contest. If money’s involved, friendship takes a hike.
8. Has there ever been a disputed result?
Never. Probably because there’s no money involved.
9. Wasn’t there a technical glitch one year? What happened then?
It was 2004, and I’ve never told the full story before. Here it is: The online results were taking forever to tabulate, and finally I got a message saying, “Here’s your winner — George Henry of Gainesville.” Well, I KNOW George Henry of Gainesville — he works for AP — and I called him and said, “Did you win my contest?” And he said, “No, dude, I got smoked. I only had two of the four right.”
Turned out the on-line results were being scored in a way contrary to Fiasco guidelines. (My contest is to pick the Final Four, not to pick the most games correctly. The earlier rounds are used only to break ties going backward.) So a new tabulation was run and a new winner declared — a very nice man from Fuquay Varina, N.C. I called him, offered congratulations and went into the standard so-why-did-you-pick-these-teams interview? And he said, “I have to tell you. I didn’t really mean to enter the contest. I was just going to your Web site to check the tournament scores.”
That’s when it hit me. “You mean our system allowed you to enter the contest after the tournament had already started?” I asked. He said yes. I thanked him, hung up and made the command decision to throw out all online entries. (We still accept faxes and snail mail, thankfully.) And the very nice man from Fuquay Varina got a sweatshirt for his honesty.
10. Is it true you were so disgusted that you proclaimed the 2004 Fiasco the last one?
Yes, but Robbyn Footlick, then our interim sports editor, deleted that line from my story. She said, “I figured you’d calm down and regret having said it.” And she was right: I did, and I would have.
11. Because it’s out of your hands, do you still get antsy about the online stuff?
A little, but our people have worked really hard to prevent a recurrence of 2004. And I’m not anxious to go back to the days when I had to open 2,000 envelopes myself. (I had a special letter-opener just for the task.)
12. Didn’t somebody famous once win the Fiasco?
Mike Mills, the bassist/keyboardist/vocalist for R.E.M., won in 1999. (The R.E.M. camp always enters, even if the group happens to be on tour abroad.) The problem with that, I freely admit, was that it looked like a set-up because (a) Mills was the most famous person entered that year, and (b) he and I happened to be friendly aquaintances. But he won fair and square, I swear, even if he did say in his winner’s interview, “I’d like to thank Don King.”
13. Have you ever picked the Final Four yourself?
Once. In 2004. I’m fairly confident I’ll never do it again. I went 0-for-4 last year.
14. Who won the first Fiasco?
Lou Ricke. He remains the only winner I couldn’t contact, something I regret to this day. He still enters every year.
15. Any tips for this year’s contest?
I picked Florida, Kansas, Georgetown and Texas A&M. Pick four other teams and you should be fine.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Quick Hit
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
Lowe’s ‘Pack show its true colors
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Tampa — The jacket was freshly dry-cleaned for Saturday’s game, which pretty much douses the whole superstition thing. A team goes on a winning streak, and sometimes nobody changes socks. Not Sidney Lowe. He keeps sending out the lucky red jacket to have the sweat stains removed.
Mojo, apparently, is unaffected by Martinizing.
Not this team.
Not this week.
Not yet.
N.C. State won another game Saturday, another game it wasn’t supposed to. First it punts Duke from the ACC tournament. Then it vanquishes the state of Virginia (Virginia and Virginia Tech). Win today over North Carolina and you might want to check the odds on the Wolfpack in the NCAA tournament. And ignore them, and plunge.
Another win. This time, the bunch that won five conference games all season overcame the odds on Jim Valvano’s birthday. Of course.
“I pay some visits to his [grave] site,” Lowe said of his former coach, who died of cancer in 1993 and is interred in Raleigh.
Maybe the first 5,000 State fans into the arena today should be given Ouija boards and incense.
Valvano, it seems, is returning Lowe’s visits.
This team has not yet won the ACC title, as Valvano’s did in Atlanta in 1983. It hasn’t even made the NCAA field, which Valvano’s “Cardiac Pack” somehow conquered that same year.
Remember? Lorenzo Charles stuffing home the missed shot by Dereck Whittenburg to beat Houston in the championship game. Valvano running around the court.
That team’s leader? That would be Sidney Lowe, then the point guard, now the ‘Pack’s first-year head coach. He has brought back the ‘Pack’s flair for the dramatic, and wrapped it in the same red sports coat made famous by predecessors Norm Sloan and Valvano.
In many ways, this team is like that one. Players overachieve. They hit key shots. They make free throws (21 of 24 in the second half of the win over Virginia Tech). They hung together this year when they lost starting point guard Engin Atsur for 12 games with a hamstring strain. They’re both tough and cool under fire — a reflection of their coach.
“The way we’re doing it right now is very similar to what our fans saw in 1983,” Lowe said.
When Atsur was out, Lowe said, “I just told them to keep fighting, stay together and good things will happen. I had no idea that we would be playing in the ACC championship game. But I told them that every game here special things can happen in the tournament every year. Whether it’s a player who emerges or a team that does something special. And I told them, ‘Why not be that team?’ “
It would take one more miracle. N.C. State would be the lowest seed (10th) ever to win the ACC tournament. It also would be the first to do it winning four games in as many days. Something outer-worldly will have to carry them today against North Carolina if their legs don’t.
Lowe is doing his part. Sometimes, he is overdoing it. He suffered severe dehydration at halftime of a game against North Carolina earlier this season and had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance.
He received fluids — and scoring updates.
“When I had tubes running in my nose,” he said, “I had somebody relaying the score to me.”
State fans love that. They never warmed up to Herb Sendek, who took the team to the NCAA tournament five straight years. Sendek was perceived as aloof. Lowe is gregarious, like Valvano was. Sendek wouldn’t even wear the red jacket.
Lowe won as a player. Now he’s winning as a coach. He said he “has to hold his emotions in check” more now for the sake of his players.
But the winning?
“The feeling is the same,” he said.
Valvano might have said that.
He would’ve been 61 on Saturday. He was 47 when he died, the same age Lowe is today. The late coach and the current coach had a strong bond back in 1983. They’re still connected.
Lowe was asked how their conversation would have gone Saturday. Easy answer. “I wouldn’t have been able to get a word in,” he said.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Gators’ best player? Nobody, everybody
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Today’s topic: Who’s Florida’s best player?
Said Larry Conley, the former Kentucky player who’s now a commentator for Lincoln Financial: “[Al] Horford. Or [Corey] Brewer.”
Said Bill Raftery of CBS: “Their most important player is Taurean Green, followed by [Joakim] Noah.”
Said Tom Hammond, longtime voice of televised SEC basketball: “Maybe Taurean Green. Or maybe Horford.”
Said Perry Clark, the former Georgia Tech assistant who was head coach at Tulane and Miami: “Taurean Green is the one they need most. I don’t know who their best player is — I think I would say Horford.” Said Sonny Smith, the former Auburn coach who’s now a TV commentator for CSS: “Corey Brewer is their best player. He’s the player I’d pick if I were starting a team. He’s the toughest matchup in the league — you can’t match him big and you can’t match him small.”
Said Joe Dean Jr., once the coach and now the AD at Birmingham-Southern and a commentator for Lincoln Financial: “Corey Brewer. When he was out early in the year, they lost to Kansas.”
Statisticians will grasp that six considered opinions yielded four different names, with no player being mentioned more than three times. And the player who received only one salute is Noah, the reigning Final Four MVP and the most recognizable collegian in the land. This tells us something we knew already but still might not fully appreciate: Florida is a great team because it has no single star but a veritable constellation.
And this constellation isn’t a mismatched collection. (UConn was a mismatched collection last year, with too many shot-blockers and not enough shot-makers.) Florida is as close to a perfect team as can be assembled in amateur basketball. There’s a true point guard (Green). There’s a dual inside presence (Horford and Noah). There’s an all-court wonder who changes games defensively and offensively (Brewer). And the starter not mentioned above (Lee Humphrey) is nonetheless essential; his shooting balances the floor for Green and Brewer to drive and Horford and Noah to post up.
There’s such a thing as having too much talent, too many egos. The beauty of Florida is that it actually functions like Mike Krzyzewski’s finger vis-Ã -vis fist metaphor. (One finger isn’t overly mighty, but five fingers balled into a fist can be.) Every starter averages between 13.2 and 10 points, and every starter save Humphrey averages at least two assists. No player averages more than 10 shots. Over 33 games, nobody has led the Gators in scoring more than nine times.
Florida’s best player? Even those on the inside are unsure. Said Larry Shyatt, whose addition to Florida’s staff helped galvanize the program: “That’s a great question, and that [the absence of a real answer] is probably what has separated us the past two years.”
Said Billy Donovan, the head coach: “I would say our team. It’s all working parts, all of them feeding off each other, all of them benefiting from each other. If I look at us, I can’t see an MVP. We’re a team.”
And here’s Andy Kennedy, whose Ole Miss Rebels lost 80-59 to Florida on Saturday: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I’m a huge Joakim Noah fan because of his energy. Al Horford has made himself into a top 10 pick. Taurean Green may be the most underrated guard in the country. Lee Humphrey is the best open shooter in the country. Corey Brewer is probably the most versatile player in the country.”
Please note: Asked to identify the best Gators player, Kennedy named five. And there’s your answer. The best Gator is nobody, and the best Gator is everybody.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Tiger the tail that wags the tour
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Frankly, it boils down to this: That while Tim Finchem occupies the chair of commissioner of professional golf in the United States, the most powerful — or maybe that should read influential — figure is one of the players. As Jack Vickers spoke at the last rites for his International Tournament, it’s Tiger Woods, and El Tigre has just proved again that he is the man at the wheel. When he plays, the event is a guaranteed success, at the gate, on the course and in the television towers. What else is there?
Vickers was left holding the bag after 21 years of trying to breathe life into his tournament at Castle Pines. Not that Woods left The International a casualty by the roadside, but merely by committing to show up he could have given that tournament one more chance at life. Now, is that fair? Perhaps not. Was it Woods’ responsibility to help save the only unique tournament on the PGA Tour? Not necessarily.
Instead, guess what Tiger will be doing on that vacated Fourth of July weekend hole in the schedule? He’ll be the centerpiece of a tournament being played in the Washington area, benefitting the Tiger Woods Foundation. Conjecture is that it will be played on the Congressional course, a U.S. Open venue in years past. (It’s unique in that it’s the only major I know of with a par-3 finishing hole.)
Tiger’s partner in the project will be AT&T, which already has its name on two other tour events, one at Pebble Beach and the new AT&T at Sugarloaf near Atlanta. The title, I hear, will be AT&T National.
For four years, Woods has lent his person to the Deutsche Bank Championship in New England over the Labor Day holiday, another generous contributor to the foundation. He has the two Buick tournaments, representing one of his commercial clients, the Invitational at San Diego and the Buick Open in Michigan. So he virtually has his own tour, considering the majors and those World Championships that draw his favor. It makes him a good “company” man to show up at events dear to the heart of the commissioner.
The truth is, that Finchem needs Woods more than Woods needs Finchem. Each has power peculiar to himself, but it is important to consider that Woods is a free agent. He can move here or there at his own whim, Finchem is locked in the commissioner’s chair, presumably bossman to every player on the PGA Tour, but none who is as essential to his image as Woods. It’s nice when Woods plays ball with the boss, such as signing on for the AT&T National.
“Tiger has a habit of playing in events where the foundation is involved,” Mark Steinberg, his frontman, told Golf World, a confirmation of old news. He found a likely one around the capital of the nation around its birthday. Make no bones about it, what Woods is doing with his foundation is bringing golf and other pleasures to several communities around the country. What he is doing through the First Tee project is an enormous stroke for golf, yet it was somewhat strange that he passed up the Tour Championship last fall, site one of First Tee’s early projects at East Lake.
So, you see, it’s strategically political that Finchem play the game with Woods. I don’t know that he has any other choice, but try giving some thought to the tour as it is today, leaning heavily on its television pot of gold, should there suddenly be no Tiger Woods to bank on. On the other hand, consider Tiger without the PGA Tour for a stage. One hand washes the other, and so on.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Gators in their own league
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Florida had 17 points before Georgia managed one, and that was your ballgame right there. A great team played great. A pretty good team saw its immediate future spelled out in the glow of the Gator starpower on dazzling display, and that destination read …
N-I-T.
Georgia could play Florida a hundred times and might — might — win once. Georgia has a nice little nucleus. Florida has the whole blessed atom. Florida could well win four more games in the Georgia Dome over the next 23 days, and if they do the Gators would be three-time SEC titlists and back-to-back national champs. Until proved otherwise, this team remains the class of the collegiate game.
It was the Bulldogs’ lousy fortune to run across Florida at a time when their NCAA chances hung by a fraying thread. Georgia tried to convince itself that this was the best time to play the Gators — after the regular season but before the Big Dance — but there’s never a time to play the Gators if you’re Georgia. Not on the last Saturday of October in Jacksonville, and not on any day on any basketball court until the Bulldogs add players and Florida subtracts three or four.
Georgia is pretty good because it tries really hard with what it has. Florida tries just as hard and has five times the resources. No Bulldogs player would start for the Gators. Chris Richard, who’s Florida’s sixth man, is no worse than Takais Brown, who’s Georgia’s leading scorer and rebounder.
The only question about Friday night’s game was whether the Gators would take it seriously, and leads of 17-0, 28-4 and 31-6 supplied the emphatic answer. The three losses Florida suffered in their last three regular-season road games? They were the inevitable February letdown of a team pointing toward March, and if anything they served as coaching tools for Billy Donovan and his assistant Larry Shyatt. Anyone who thinks this team isn’t primed to defend its title(s) suffers from utter delusion.
“You see I haven’t written anything down,” said Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy, sitting courtside Friday night and ostensibly doing reconnaissance on the Gators. “When you scout a team you look for something to exploit, but with them there’s nothing you can exploit. You can only hope to limit them with surprise and change and smoke and mirrors, and then you hope you shoot it well and they don’t.”
Last month Dennis Felton called Florida the best aggregation he’d faced as a head coach or an assistant, and he spent six years working in the Big East and the ACC. Kennedy went even further back to find antecedents: “The Vegas team of 1991 that we played against [at UAB], the one that went undefeated but lost to Duke, was great, and Duke had some great teams, too. This is a team like that.
Said Sonny Smith, who coached Charles Barkley at Auburn and who does TV commentary for CSS today: “I don’t know that Joe B. Hall ever had a team like this [at Kentucky, and Hall’s Wildcats were 1978 national champs]. I don’t think LSU ever had a team like this, not even with Chris Jackson and Shaquille O’Neal.”
Kentucky’s two-deep 1996 NCAA titlist might have been a match for these Gators 1 through 10, but only five men can play at a time, and Florida’s five is better than the Wildcats’ first unit of 11 years ago. Kennedy again: “They’ve got four guys who’ll be first-round draft picks, and the fifth [Lee Humphrey] is the best open shooter in the country.”
There can be no disgrace in losing to a team of this eminence — disappointment, yes, but no disgrace. Georgia wanted to win Friday so as to be invited to the NCAA tournament. Florida wants to win a second consecutive NCAA tournament. Georgia’s dream wasn’t realistic. Florida’s is.
Permalink | Comments (46) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Tar Heels have winning look
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Tampa — The starting lineup includes three freshmen and a sophomore. The center has a broken nose. The coach is prone to momentary lapses on geography, and conference, and sport, because that’s the only logical explanation for Roy Williams referring to the ACC tournament Friday as “the world’s largest cocktail party.”
None of this might seem like the backdrop for a national champion. But North Carolina is making the case for being more than just a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
“They have talent to win the whole thing, and I don’t think it matters if they’re a 1 seed, 2 seed, 3 seed or 4 seed,” said Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton, who, of course, would settle for any seed.
The Tar Heels made their ACC tournament debut Friday, and they did something rather unusual for a favorite. They won. Easily. Despite the masked and freakish-looking Tyler Hansbrough recording nearly as many fouls (five) as points (six), Carolina slapped Florida State 73-58.
Too young?
Too soft?
Too flawed?
Not worthy of a top seed?
Was this the Carolina team everybody’s questioning?
The Tar Heels led Florida State by as many as 25 points. They would’ve won by more but started laughing and nearly hyperventilated.
Don’t wonder about this team any more. Carolina went 5-4 down the stretch, leading some to wonder about its previous lofty status. But Friday, even with their best player, Hansbrough, looking insignificant, the Heels rolled. They have matured. They have gotten smarter and tougher, mentally and physically.
If Carolina slips up while trying to win its first ACC title since 1998, it shouldn’t be overanalyzed, because there’s clearly something in the water down here.
In January, Florida State lost to North Carolina by 26. But Hamilton says there is no comparison between that team and this one. This one’s way better.
“They demonstrated a lot more patience,” he said. “They executed better. They seem to be in sync. It’s very difficult when you play that many players, especially when you have that much youth. Roy has overcome some of [those] development [problems].
“Personally I think the losses they’ve had will probably make them a better team in the tournament. Sometimes when you’re young and growing and having success, you don’t have a chance to look at yourself critically. But when you make mistakes along the way, that’s the time of learning and teaching. With a young team, that’s not at all bad.”
Carolina couldn’t get much from Hansbrough, who was whacked across the schnozzola by Duke’s Gerald Henderson. Hansbrough wore a clear protective mask for protection, prompting teammate Marcus Ginyard to say, “He’s got that ‘Psycho T’ persona, and the mask just makes him look more like an animal.”
Other teammates called him “Jason,” but Hansbrough really wasn’t that intimidating. He said having to wear the mask was frustrating. “I’m not even a guy who gets taped, so putting on a mask really is something new,” he said
He had trouble seeing the ball, which can be a problem when the game you play involves a ball. “It affects my peripheral vision,” he said. “The mask comes down from my nose and sticks out so I can’t see things straight in front of me sometimes.”
Doctors have told him he might have to wear it for two more weeks. What he couldn’t figure out Friday was why he got called for a foul every time he so much as breathed on an FSU player. It’s not like a guy with a broken nose is going to look for somebody to punch. Besides, Duke already left town.
But the Tar Heels should be able to survive with a diminished Hansbrough for a while. The three freshmen — Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson and Brandan Wright — combined for 43 points against the Seminoles.
Carolina also is motivated to win this tournament for the first time in nine years.
“I haven’t won it since I came back,” Williams said. “Everybody acts like I pooh-pooh the ACC tournament because there’s that thought process that you play for nine weeks, why do you have to play them again in three days? But since we’re here, I want to win this sucker.”
They may also win that other sucker.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Dogs rise, but Gators are too tall an order
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
They’re the fifth-best team in a 12-member conference that produced half of last year’s Final Four, fifth-best in a league that had five teams in the Associated Press preseason Top 25. They’re the fifth-best team in the SEC, which has dispatched at least five representatives to each of the past 10 NCAA tournaments, but it’s in keeping with the Georgia Bulldogs’ run of rotten luck that they’ve picked the wrong year to be fifth-best.
Georgia beat Auburn in the first round of the SEC tournament, a result that still leaves the Bulldogs with a fighting chance. All they have to do is beat the reigning national champion tonight, and if they manage that then suddenly the league’s fifth-best team will look like one of the nation’s 35 or so finest outfits. Beat Florida and Georgia is probably — that’s probably, as opposed to positively — bound for the Big Dance.
As we know, not many teams beat Florida. Only five have turned the trick since February 2006, and only one of those (Kansas) managed it on a neutral court. And the Bulldogs cannot count on any sort of crowd advantage tonight in, of all places, the Georgia Dome. As ever, Georgia arrived at the SEC tournament with the smallest complement of fans, which makes no sense unless you’ve grasped just how much pride Bulldog backers seem to take in disliking basketball.
And that, as ever, is a pity. This Georgia team is a clever and resourceful bunch, an assemblage of both pride and principle. “We’re not yet as talented as we need to be,” Dennis Felton said before the tournament commenced, “but we’re still highly, highly competitive.”
The Bulldogs showed as much Thursday, falling behind 10-3 and then dismissing Auburn the way a good team should handle a mediocrity. Georgia led by 10 at the half and by 18 soon thereafter, and a guy sitting courtside was gripped by the same belief he has held since December — that this team is good enough to play in the NCAA.
But the cold numbers, alas, are still rather chilly. Georgia is 18-12. It entered Thursday’s game with an RPI of 63, which isn’t nearly enough for realistic at-large consideration. Then again, the RPI would surely spike upward if the Bulldogs beat Florida, just as Georgia Tech’s did after its victory over North Carolina last week. Winnning tonight would change all dynamics. As Felton said Tuesday, “Two more wins would certainly get us in.”
Discouraging words: Georgia hasn’t beaten Florida since 2004. The Bulldogs lost by 16 in Gainesville in January and by 10 in Athens last month, and the winners were so impressive in the latter game that Felton labeled them, correctly, “a special, special team.” But strange things happen in conference tournaments. Miami beat Maryland on Thursday, and California beat UCLA. And the Gators, who have won the past two SEC tournaments and who know they’re going to be an NCAA No. 2 seed at worst, might not care a great deal about winning here.
This much we know: Georgia cares very much. “If we win this game,” said swingman Billy Humphrey, “we really send a message. We tell the [NCAA tournament] committee, ‘We’ve earned it — give it to us.’?”
Said center Dave Bliss: “We’ve had some amount of success already. Getting to .500 in conference play was a big step. But the bigger goal is to get to the NCAA tournament, and to do that we have to win this game.”
They probably won’t. The Gators are likely too good to lose to these Bulldogs anywhere. And if that’s the case, it will come as cold comfort to Felton and his ambitious men that, for all their conspicuous progress, they wound up being the SEC’s fifth-best team in a year when they needed to be the fourth-best.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Tech’s loss a puzzle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Tampa — By the time Georgia Tech stepped onto the court Thursday night, the ACC tournament had already mutated into something unfamiliar.
Maryland lost to Miami.
Duke lost to N.C. State.
Traditionalists lost their lunch.
Fortunately for the Yellow Jackets, they didn’t have to take a form totally unfamiliar to fans. To the contrary, the form they took in the opening round against Wake Forest was a reminder of a painful stretch that led coach Paul Hewitt to take the players’ names off their jerseys.
For most of Thursday’s game against 11th-seeded Wake Forest, the Jackets returned to the often sloppy and defensively lax bunch that drifted to a 2-6 start in the ACC. By the time they woke up, it was too late to discourage an inferior opponent.
The Jackets took the shine off a strong regular-season finish, losing to Wake Forest in double overtime, 114-112. This is the same Wake team Tech beat by 14 only two weeks earlier.
Go figure. The pressure was off to make the NCAA tournament. The confidence was up to win this tournament. This just wasn’t the right time for a logical conclusion.
Try this for logic: In day one of the ACC tournament, seeds 9 through 12 knocked out 5 through 8.
Last year, Tech also was one and done, getting blown out by 18 points by Maryland in Greensboro, N.C. But last year, an early exit was anticipated. This time, the Jackets expected to make it to the weekend. This time, they were toying with thoughts of their first ACC title since 1995.
If Wake Forest looked confused at the outset of the night, it’s understandable. It couldn’t possibly know who to prepare for.
Tech played with two personalities this season, and the Demon Deacons saw both. In January, Wake dumped the Jackets 85-75 (their fourth straight loss). Three weeks later, Tech won the rematch 75-61 in the midst of a 7-2 finishing kick.
Why even bother looking at game tape?
It’s difficult to say who — or what — the Jackets looked like in the first half. They led 37-33 but struggled in the simple areas, like boxing out on the offensive boards.
It didn’t help that the first half amounted to a painful concerto of whistles. Tech and Wake combined for 22 fouls and 29 turnovers. The word “flow” did not come to mind. The words “cruel and unusual,” maybe.
Hewitt had grown accustomed to seeing things run smoothly. He didn’t take this well. He got noticeably heated during a timeout with 3:02 left, imploring his team to play smart and pick up the defensive intensity. That hadn’t been a problem of late. The Jackets had allowed an average of only 67.8 points in the past nine games, compared to 78.8 during a four-game skid that threatened to smother another postseason.
If the Jackets didn’t quite backslide to the team that started 2-6 in the ACC, they certainly didn’t resemble the bunch that followed 6-2. At times against Wake, they looked disjointed and struggled.
Tech led 56-50 eight minutes into the second half, but then went cold at the same time Wake’s Michael Drum got hot. He drained three straight 3-pointers to put the Deacons ahead 64-58. Suddenly Tech was reeling.
At that point, it became a game of survival. Wake built the lead to eight, 70-62. The Jackets came back to pull even at 74-all. Wake jumped ahead 79-74 with 1:39 left after consecutive jumpers by Ishmael Smith.
Over? No.
A Javaris Crittendon driving layup with 13 seconds left tied it, 82-82, but the freshman missed a free throw that would’ve given Tech the lead. The game went to overtime. The Jackets kept falling behind but kept coming back. Anthony Morrow’s 3-pointer with one second left sent it into a second overtime.
Tech took the lead at 111-108. But Harvey Hale (who scored 21 of his 22 points in overtime) hit a pair of 3-point shots to put Wake ahead with 26 seconds left. Morrow had another potential tying shot at the buzzer bounce off the rim and out.
But nobody figured it would come down to that bounce.
Nobody figured we would see this Tech team again.
Permalink | Comments (51) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Total recall of SEC tourney gaffes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
This will be my 18th SEC tournament, and when I think back on them I mostly think about Dale Brown.
I think about the time he went after Carlus Groves (after the Tennessee player had gone after Shaquille O’Neal) and we in the media expected Daddy Dale to pull a Woody Hayes and resign on the spot. Being Daddy Dale, he didn’t. Being Daddy Dale, he came out swinging (orally) and railed against the league for not protecting the frail Shaq. (Who would turn pro a month later.)
I think about the other time the subject of retirement arose, or seemed to arise, regarding Daddy Dale. It was in 1996 in New Orleans. LSU had had another lousy season — most of Brown’s years there were fruitful, but not at the close of his tenure — and he, in a standard-issue opening statement after another Round 1 loss, said something to the effect that “this brings to an end” another chapter in his life.
I looked at Curry Kirkpatrick of ESPN, who was sitting next to me, and said, “Did he just retire?” And Curry said, “I think so.”
Being Daddy Dale, he went on for another five minutes before taking his first question. I asked it. I said, “Excuse me, but did you just retire?”
He said: “Who are you?” I told him. “What paper are you with?” I told him that, too. “You obviously know nothing about me.” Well, we’d known one another for 15 years — I’d once done a 120-inch feature on him — and were such avid conversationalists that he’d call my house in the middle of the summer just to ask questions like, “Do you know anybody who’d be willing to cover the Olympics for a Yugoslav paper?”
And then Daddy Dale swore he hadn’t retired, that retirement was the furthest thing from his mind, that only an ignorant fool would have interpreted his remarks thusly. And then he saw Curry sitting alongside me and said, “Hey, there’s Curry Kirkpatrick.”
And Curry said: “Dale, I thought you were gone, too.”
Postscript: Brown announced his (actual) retirement midway through the next season. The last time I saw Daddy Dale was at the 2004 Final Four in San Antonio, and he handed me a book of his inspirational stories. “Good reading for when you’re in the bathroom,” he said.
And Claude Felton, the Georgia publicist who was serving as the moderator that night in the Superdome, never lets a month go by without asking me, “Who are you? What paper are you with?”
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
ACC tourney is wide open
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Tampa — Duke is a seventh seed and playing on Thursday, which immediately tells you that this has not been a typical ACC season and won’t be a typical ACC tournament — and not just because I think we’re closer to Havana than Tobacco Road.
“Teams beaten in games this season where you’d go, ‘Well, I didn’t think they’d win that game,’” Maryland coach Gary Williams said Wednesday. “As long as it stays that way, this will be wide open. I don’t think anybody could have picked the outcome of games in February this year.”
Like it was predictable in January? Clemson was 17-0 in mid-month, then finished 4-9. Duke went from feared to mocked. (Now don’t laugh. Yet.)
This is what college basketball has become. The talent has been spread around. Every team is young, and with youth comes little consistency, or often defense.
The ACC isn’t unusual. It’s just a little ahead of the curve. There are schools in the middle on the tournament bubble. There’s a Georgia Tech team that started 2-6 in the ACC, finished 6-2 and hopes the former was an aberration. There’s a bottom-feeder from Miami that recently dumped Virginia and can let its mind wander.
Most of all, there’s North Carolina State, which tonight might as well be America’s Team. The Wolfpack plays Duke, which closed the season with two losses and a forearm shiver. The Blue Devils have won seven of the last eight ACC titles and 16 overall, more than any other school. But they haven’t been this low of a seed since 1995 (ninth) and tonight they’re reduced to playing a preliminary round game for the first time in seven years. They also will be minus suspended guard Gerald Henderson.
Now, most will look at this and still see: Duke vs. North Carolina State. But given the way this season has unfolded, what do you think is going through Sidney Lowe’s mind?
In 1983, Lowe was the starting point guard for N.C. State under the late coach, Jim Valvano. The Wolfpack was a fourth seed in the ACC tournament at the Omni but opened with a victory over Wake Forest and then stunned North Carolina and Virginia in succession. Lowe was the tournament MVP. (All that did was set the stage for the Wolfpack winning the national championship.)
None of N.C. State’s players were even born yet when Valvano was running on the court in Albuquerque, looking for somebody to hug. But they don’t have to look far to draw on that history. Lowe is their first-year coach.
“This is very similar in that we had to win the tournament in order to get into the NCAA tournament,” Lowe said Wednesday. “While we’re not talking about those things yet, we are talking about doing something special.”
N.C. State has been a microcosm of the ACC’s absurdity. It went only 5-11 in the conference and lost to Miami by 15, but beat North Carolina once, and Virginia Tech and Wake Forest twice each. Tech coach Paul Hewitt laughed when somebody asked about the ACC tournament being wide open because, “I hear that every year.” He has been banging the drum for the conference to get nine teams in the NCAAs because of the balance.
“Unless you have a team with three or four NBA players in the starting lineup, it’s always like that,” Hewitt said.
Every ACC team has shown its flaws. Every team, as Gary Williams said, “has won games this year when it knows it has played well. So everybody is coming here thinking it has a shot.”
Even Wake Forest, which had lost six straight before dumping Tech by 10 and later Virginia to close the season.
Even Florida State, which somehow beat Maryland and Duke but lost to Clemson in consecutive games.
Even Miami, which has beaten Georgia Tech, Maryland and Virginia. OK. Probably not Miami.
North Carolina won the ACC’s regular season at 11-5. But if it had lost its final game to Duke, it would be in a much worse position than just 10-6.
FSU coach Leonard Hamilton explains: “If the No. 1 team in our league had lost the last day, they would be in fifth [in seeding].”
North Carolina fifth? Duke seventh? N.C. State 10th?
Can we keep moving this tournament south?
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Final Four, Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Honorable Felton, UGA due some breaks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Four years ago the SEC convened to play basketball and Georgia stayed home in shame. The self-removal from the 2003 postseason remains the lowest point in the school’s athletics history, but the arrival of another SEC tournament illustrates how far from rock bottom this program has climbed.
Georgia hasn’t gotten lucky in the post-Jim Harrick years, not even once, and still it begins play tonight with, as Dennis Felton notes, the fifth-best record (17-12, 8-8 SEC) “in the toughest division of any conference.” This proud and driven coach has surely been tempted a thousand times to cut the same corners as his sullied predecessor, and not once has he yielded. Felton has done exactly as he said he’d do: He has built a program that warrants not just support but admiration.
In April 2004 Felton traveled to Indianapolis for the NCAA hearings on the mess he’d inherited. The contentious day got off to a festive start when Harrick likened president Michael Adams, his erstwhile friend and advocate, to a bag of fertilizer. Finally, when all the questioning and bickering was done and an adjournment at hand, Felton asked to address the panel. “I can’t remember exactly what I said,” he says now, but the message was pointed: This will never happen again so long as I’m coaching here.
Felton: “I wanted to make it very clear that [the NCAA] could count on the fact that we had pure intentions, that we were intent on doing the right thing, that they could count on us being an exemplary program.”
So he said then, and so has he done. Consensus holds that the Bulldogs need to win twice in this tournament to have a chance at an NCAA berth. Being human, Felton reflects on the Western Kentucky game, a three-point loss achieved without leading scorer Takais Brown, who was eligible by NCAA and Georgia standards but not by Felton’s more exacting criteria, and on the 12-point defeat suffered last week in Rupp Arena without Levi Stukes, who averages 12.1 points but who was suspended for sassing the strength coach. Might those have been the needed victories right there?
“Of course I [think about it],” Felton says. “You’re always doing the math and evaluating things.”
Not subject to re-evaluation is this man’s personal code. Maybe he’s a 20th-Century guy trapped in the 21st Century’s absence of accountability, but Felton, without apology, holds himself and his men to a higher measure. “I really don’t think I’m that different from other coaches,” he says, but Felton bears the same resemblance to the brazen Harrick as chalk does to cheese.
With so much at stake and his fourth Georgia team so near the Big Dance, a lesser man might have looked the other way when Stukes mouthed off. Felton never looks the other way. “It’s real important to the growth of the program,” he says, “even if it means sacrificing games.” Who thinks like that anymore?
This honorable man does, and if ever someone was overdue for a dollop of fortune, it’s Felton. His best recruit, Louis Williams of South Gwinnett, never enrolled. His most talented player, guard Mike Mercer, wrecked his knee on Feb. 10. His most valuable player, point guard Sundiata Gaines, sprained his ankle as Georgia was about to embark on a show-the-world fortnight with games against Georgia Tech, Clemson, Wisconsin and Florida at the end of December and beginning of January. (The Bulldogs wound up 0-for-4.)
“I don’t sit around and fret, ‘Can’t we get a break?’ ” Felton says. “I face up to the reality that we haven’t gotten a break.”
And still Georgia is nuzzling close to the NCAA tournament, close without once taking the inviting path of least resistance, close without compromising any of its coach’s deeply felt principles. This still isn’t the greatest team in the world, but it absolutely stands for something. As the saying goes, if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything. Georgia once fell for Jim Harrick’s line, but the falling is over. This is a program with a purpose.
Permalink | Comments (28) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Death of young athletes shocking
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
You didn’t know them. Now everybody does. During the time it took for a bus to flip over a concrete barricade, tumble 30 feet and crash sideways onto an Atlanta expressway, Tyler Williams, David Betts, Scott Harmon and Cody Holp entered our consciousness. They were The Baseball Players who perished on Friday, along with the driver and his wife.
No disrespect to the driver and his wife, but it is The Baseball Players who make us ache the most.
They were so young, so innocent, so vibrant in our minds. Mostly, they were athletes.
There is something about the tragic death of those who play and coach games that make the inexplicably horrible even more difficult to take.
“When it comes to a lot of folks who follow sports, I guess athletes are the equivalent to the gladiators that they had back in the old days, where, for a lot of people, athletes are heroes in their own way,” said Dr. Patrick J. Devine, a professor at Kennesaw State University, after spending much of the 1980s as the Braves’ sports psychologist. “People have a tendency to look up to [athletes], because they are supposed to be the most physically fit, and you expect them to have good self-control and great discipline. Plus, they generally are on the way up, not down. Then, suddenly, they’re gone, and that adds to the sense of an awful loss.”
The famous or the obscure. It doesn’t matter. When we heard last summer about those high school deaths of a football player from Rockdale County and a cross country runner from Mundy’s Mill, the news stung nearly as much as discovering that Payne Stewart was among the ghostly passengers on a Learjet drifting aimlessly through the sky after a loss in cabin pressure.
Speaking of the obscure, you probably never heard of Damien Nash. Well, not until a few days ago. Soon after he dribbled in a basketball game, he collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack before his wife and 7-month-old daughter.
He was 24. That made it tough for the senses to comprehend. He also was a backup running back for the Denver Broncos. That made it tougher, especially since this was less than two months after teammate Darrent Williams was killed in a random drive-by shooting. He also was 24. The Baseball Players weren’t even that old.
“In the case of that bus accident, you realize that, not only were they just kids, but while coming up in a Mennonite community, you know they were hard-working, and they were pretty straight-laced,” Devine said.
“They weren’t drinking on the bus. We know that. They had this thriving vitality, and you just say to yourself that this was about the last way you could take them out.”
Yes, indeed. There was Reggie White stunning reality by passing away the day after Christmas from a sleep disorder. One moment, Len Bias was slated to become the next Bill Russell, John Havlicek and Larry Bird for the Boston Celtics. The next, Bias was slam-dunked out of life by a nasty snort of cocaine.
Prior to Sept. 11, there was Sept. 6. We’re talking about 1972, when 11 Israeli athletes were murdered during the Summer Olympics.
All of that said, troubled aircrafts have been the most common link between sports, catastrophe and public mourning. Long before Stewart, there was Knute Rockne never reaching California on a trip from Florida after his plane crashed into a Kansas cornfield. Roberto Clemente and Thurman Munson also had fatal flights, and so did a football team from Marshall and a basketball team from Evansville.
Nobody put sports deaths in better perspective than Tommy Lasorda, the former Los Angeles Dodgers manager and occasional theologian. While giving a eulogy 14 years ago after two Cleveland Indians pitchers died in a boating accident during spring training, Lasorda said the question shouldn’t be “why?” in these situations. The question should be “What?” as in what do you believe.
Among other things, you should believe that athletes and other sports personalities are only human.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Falcons / NFL, High School, Terence Moore
Waiting for answers to Braves’ questions
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
‘Tis that time of the year when the flame of hope burns high in the breast of the baseball hopeful. And sometimes for aging stars who may be running low on the same. Also in the hearts of crosscheckers and scouts who look out across the field, fearing for the fate of one so prized they would stake their careers on him. It may not have occurred to you that how you played has no bearing at all on your status as a pursuer of talent.
What occurs to me is that this is not your usual spring training for the Braves. They are charged with having to rebuild on their first losing season since 1990. They must restructure the right side of their infield with Adam LaRoche and Marcus Giles gone. That means there are 43 home runs and 150 RBIs to be replaced. Not like pulling rabbits out of a hat. As they went into rehearsal, the two jobs had been handed over to a first baseman who’d had been to bat 128 times in the major league, the Canadian Scott Thorman; and second base had been reserved for Kelly Johnson, who’d come up as a shortstop, moved to the outfield, and now, after a season spent in surgery, would replace the pugnacious Giles.
Of course, it could be an all-Canadian side, should Johnson fail. Pete Orr, who comes from Ontario, might move in at second, though Orr’s value has been coming off the bench, a .300 hitter two seasons ago.
On the left side, there is age to be dealt with, not that Chipper Jones and Edgar Renteria are ready for the boneyard. Jones will be 35 in April, but a chipper one only when his underpinning is firm. Renteria is sound, not the flashy Rafael Furcal type. He’ll hit a few home runs and drive in a decent number for a shortstop, but the better part is that he made only 13 errors last season. He had made 30 with the Red Sox and was grateful to find refuge from the booing. Harsh, demanding fans, those Beantowners.
After seasons of dealing with gypsy mercenaries to complete the outfield — Gary Sheffield, J.D. Drew come to mind — they are now dealing in homebodies, Andruw Jones and Jeff Francoeur. (And speaking of millionaires, wait’ll Jeff comes to bat at the bargaining table next year.) If Matt Diaz played Ryan Langerhans’ kind of defense, and if Langerhans swung Diaz’s kind of bat, the Braves would have the perfect left fielder. Oddly, though, last season the left-handed Langerhans hit .308 against left-handed pitching, the right-handed Diaz .295. Who knows? If things don’t work out at first base for Thorman, he might find himself in left field. But then who would play first?
Glad you brought that up. A year ago James Jurries arrived in camp full of promise. He’d hit .284 with a generous sprinkling of 21 home runs at Richmond. No threat to Adam LaRoche, still a study on defense, but a right-handed batter. Then he dropped out of sight, and his average plunged to .205 at Richmond, and pffffft! He’s back this spring, still swinging the bat, but no threat, from what I see.
You’ll notice that pitching has not been mentioned, and that’s because only the brave broach that subject. We have already spoken on the displeasure of sending LaRoche away for another bullpen body, Mike Gonzales. Makes no difference how strong your bullpen is if the closers have no lead to close on. John Smoltz, Tim Hudson, Chuck James, Mike Hampton and Kyle Davies make a comforting sound for starters, but there are ticklish doubts there. Hudson has to become the pitcher he was in Oakland, and from what I read, the news coming out of Disney World about Hampton gives you the shingles.
He hasn’t thrown a business pitch in nearly two years. The Braves have a big paycheck on their hands and Hampton has a long way to go, the way it seems. Actually, this team is well stocked in pitchers with possibilities, a corps of setup guys, but only two left-handers who might start, Macay McBride, who’d love it, and Gonzales, whose future is invested in the bullpen. There’s a lot to be threshed out at Lake Buena Vista, and I can’t wait to see it live.
Permalink | Comments (20) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Don’t know how the Falcons’ next season will play out. But I have pretty good feeling about Seattle’s. Just wondering how it’s going to go over in Flowery Branch when Patrick Kerney and Jim Mora are in the Super Bowl.
9: The NFC lacks a dominant team. The chance of Chicago going 13-3 again - and getting home field advantage through the playoffs - seems remote. Seattle is a talented team that just filled a huge need with Kerney and will be motivated coming off a sub-par season. As long as Mora can make it through the season without talking about the Washington job, the Seahawks should be fine.
8: Happened to be talking Tuesday morning to John Schuerholz (ranked 42nd by Forbes among pro sports general managers) when he checked his Blackberry and noticed an e-mail from Don Waddell (ranked sixth). “Stan [Kasten] hired both of us, so I guess he made one good decision.”
7: Seriously, this is not meant as a slap at Waddell, whose trade deadline moves (Alexei Zhitnik, Keith Tkachuk, Pascal Dupuis, Eric Belanger) make the Thrashers a legit Stanley Cup contender. But what possible reasonable, sensible, logical set of criteria could Forbes have been using that would rank the Thrashers’ GM No. 6 out of 98 and Schuerholz 42nd? Now Billy Knight at 75 - at least we’re moving in the right direction.
6: You may have noticed that we here at ajc.com are running a poll ranking the local four GMs. As of this morning, 17 out of 1,403 respondents put Billy Knight first. Please, if any of you “17” are out there, I want to hear from you. That includes you, Billy. (By the way, Billy, you can only vote once an hour.)
5: So if you’re Evander Holyfield, are you really upset that you have been linked to a steroid/HGH investigation, or are you just happy that somebody is talking about you again?
4: So I used to think, “Ann Coulter - she’s psycho, but she’s hot.” Now, I’m thinking, “Fatal Attraction. Dead bunny in the pot. Don’t even think about it.”
3: Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — This is my last day at the “Happiest Place on Earth,” which retains its title despite the fact I have been sharing a house with David O’Brien and his cat, Coltrane. For anybody wishing to sublet my room, please send an e-mail. Also, upon arrival at our Kissimmee abode, please take Coltrane out of the dryer and tell David that you have no idea how he got there.
2: I know Bobby Cox is trying to back off the retirement projections now. But this is a man who doesn’t like to be the story and certainly doesn’t want to be a distraction to his players. Trust me on this: When Cox starts waxing on about farming, grandchildren and taking vacations in Maine and Prague, he’s gone.
1: Terry Pendleton, your table is waiting.
Permalink | Comments (71) | Categories: Quick Hit
Thorman energizes in big way
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — There are two things Scott Thorman can generally count on in spring training. One is being told that his flight for Richmond leaves in the morning. The other is somebody on the phone complaining about the weather back home.
“They’re getting dumped on right now — a lot of snow and pretty cold,” said Thorman, the Braves’ rookie first baseman by way of Cambridge, Ontario. “So they don’t want to hear about me barbequing in the backyard. If you go to the beach right now, I guarantee it’s all Ontario and Quebec plates in the parking lot.”
This spring will be significantly different for Thorman. When the Braves break camp, he will break tradition and go to Atlanta with them. “I’ve been to three spring trainings, and I know when every single cut day was,” said the 25-year-old, a minor-league lifer until being called up last season.
It is difficult to miss Thorman. He is 6 feet 3, 235 pounds and loud. When the Braves’ team bus had to stop short Sunday during the drive to Vero Beach, it was Thorman who yelled from the back of the bus: “The sandwiches are OK! Keep going!”
Quoth the manager, Bobby Cox, in understatement: “He’s an energizing guy.”
Thorman’s enthusiasm is infectious, his work ethic a reflection of his upbringing in a blue — collar Canadian town. As a youth, Thorman spent many Saturdays accompanying his father on construction jobs. Robert Thorman never had the opportunity to reciprocate when Scott made it to the major leagues last June. He died 13 years ago of skin cancer.
Few realized the significance when Thorman made his major league debut last June. It was Father’s Day. Scott took it as a tribute. “It was a special moment for me and my family,” he said. “My mom and sisters and in-laws were there. It was the best Father’s Day gift I could have had.”
Thorman’s wife, Kelly, is eight months pregnant with the couple’s first child. Deciding on a name wasn’t difficult. Robert Thomas Thorman is due March 25.
“I wish he could be here for the birth of his grandson,” he said. “I hope I can teach my son a lot of the things my dad taught me.”
Thorman was only 12 when his father died. He was a multi-sport athlete — hockey until he was 12; baseball, basketball and track through high school — and often coached by his father. More important, Thorman said, “He taught me life lessons.”
“When you lose a parent,” he continued, “you definitely get a greater appreciation for a lot of things. I’m not going to lie to you. You have to grow up a lot faster than most kids because you have to deal with that. But I guess, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
Resilience isn’t an issue. Thorman has worked his way through every level of the minors, from Gulf Coast to Macon to Myrtle Beach to Greenville to Mississippi to Richmond. He is one of three players in camp from the 2000 draft class (the others: Kelly Johnson and Blaine Boyer).
Thorman also missed all of 2001 because of shoulder surgery for a torn labrum and “instability” — the result of separating it three times the year before: sliding headfirst, lifting weights and during rehab. He hit .294 the following year in Macon.
Thorman played 55 games with the Braves last season, but his starting job was cemented when Adam LaRoche was traded to Pittsburgh for reliever Mike Gonzalez. He is hitting .375 this spring. Noteworthy: He had two hits in Vero Beach after updating the medical status of the team sandwiches.
Logic dictates Thorman has seen the last of the minors. His cold winters back home will be by choice, after the season. Maybe he’ll even make it into the Cambridge Sports Hall of Fame one day. (Yes, it exists.)
“I don’t know about that,” Thorman said.
Regardless, he has been strengthened by the journey.
Permalink | Comments (20) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
New teams make mark for women
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
For years, no, decades, women’s college basketball had two names.
Tennessee. UConn.
Even conferences had their favorite daughters. There was the SEC, for instance, where the Lady Dogs of Georgia ranked with the Lady Vols of Tennessee among the SEC elite for nearly forever.
So it was rather significant on Sunday night inside The Arena at Gwinnett Center that the two teams dribbling for the SEC tournament championship weren’t Tennessee or Georgia, the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, respectively. They were kicked in their royal conference fannies during the semifinals by No. 4 seed LSU and No. 3 seed Vanderbilt.
It only figured. These are the times in which we live regarding the suddenly balanced women’s game. With tournament MVP Carla Thomas leading the way (13 points, six rebounds, two blocked shots), Vanderbilt survived LSU’s plodding style for a 51-45 victory in a game that mostly was even from the opening tipoff to deep inside the final minute. “I know it wasn’t as pretty as our first two games,” said Vanderbilt coach Melanie Balcomb, referring to blowouts of Florida and Georgia. “What’s really important is that we showed we could play at any tempo.”
Yes, indeed, with LSU so effective at dictating the offensive pace for the evening that the Tigers held their normally sharp-shooting opponents to one 3-point basket. It didn’t matter for LSU since it hadn’t a clue against Vanderbilt’s 3-2 zone. In fact, none of this matters much at all in the grand scheme. They’re both going to the NCAA tournament. It’s just that Vanderbilt likely goes as a No. 2 seed after winning the tournament of the nation’s most competitive conference. Said Balcomb, of her 26-5 team, winners for a 10th time during its past 11 games, “I try so hard not to read the projections … because so much goes into it, and you never know what the selection committee is thinking.”
Whatever the case, all of that ranks slightly behind the following on the total significance meter: Women’s college basketball is in a different place, and it is a good place. Maryland jumped out of nowhere to capture a national championship last season after a corny but effective “Why not us?” pitch in recent years to capture a slew of McDonald’s All-Americans. The year before that, Baylor (I mean, Baylor) won it all.
Here’s the deal: It used to be that the longevity of your average women’s basketball coaches was just shy of an eternity, because nobody cared. Certainly not athletics directors. Since those same athletics directors once gave their women’s coaches only a pittance in salary, mediocrity or less was ignored. Nowadays, just in the SEC, you have Florida firing Carolyn Peck earlier in the season, pending the Gators’ last game, and Arkansas forcing Susie Gardner to resign after consecutive years of faltering down the stretch.
Those are signs of growth in what was a stagnant sport. Other signs include the upgrades given to women’s programs across the country, enough to make the game more than just a Tennessee and UConn thing, not only for high-powered recruits but various television entities.
In this one, ESPN2 cameras zoomed into see a Vanderbilt bunch that plays the ultimate team game. The Lady Commodores are into a deliberate offense (well, not as much as the one they were forced to play on Sunday) that revolves around a bunch of solid players. As for LSU, it’s all about Sylvia Fowles, the Tigers’ splendid center. She only was good against Vanderbilt, and that’s because of her three blocks, nine rebounds and a steal. Other than that, she missed 7 of 11 shots.
This isn’t the end for Fowles or her Tigers, though. Said LSU coach Pokey Chatman, with her team at 25-6, “What this does is give them an opportunity to understand where you’re good, and where you need to be better, and what you need to work on when you go to the next season.”
That “next season” is the NCAA tournament, where suddenly anything is possible.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Chipper optimistic about health, team
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — Like almost any pro athlete who is nearing 35 and coming off an injury-plagued season, Chipper Jones felt compelled to reassess things this past winter.
The result of that reassessment just isn’t what you would have expected: Shorter workouts and more drive-thru.
“Last year I worked out three hours a day and I still played 110 games,” Jones said. “I worked so hard on my core last offseason, and what happens? I get two oblique injuries.
“I was drinking a lot of whey shakes, eating a lot of protein bars, a lot of oatmeal, a lot of yogurt, a lot of eggs whites.”
And now?
“And now, I still have a lot of egg whites, but with the yolks,” he said. “Candy bars have taken the place of the protein bars. Instead of the whey shakes, I get those cookies-and-cream milkshakes from Chick-fil-A.”
The baseball writers association is considering suing for copyright infringement.
But there it is: If Jones can stay healthy and play at least 150 games for the first time since 2003, he will redefine the workout habits of elite pro athletes everywhere.
“I’ll be Johnny Kruk all over again,” he said.
With a renovated bullpen and a realigned rotation, the Braves could be the Braves all over again this season. But that depends partly on Jones, a franchise original entering his 14th season. He averaged 157 games for eight seasons from 1996 to 2003. But he dropped to 137 games in 2004 (once on the disabled list with a strained hamstring), 109 in 2005 (once on the DL with a toe ligament) and 110 last year (three DL stints: ankle and knee, oblique, oblique).
It was the concern of injury before last season that led Jones to hire a new trainer who both cooked for him and designed new, expanded workouts.
So much for that idea.
He blames the injuries on “fluky things,” not his regimen. That said, the trainer is now an ex-employee. Jones dropped the sit-up marathon and the eat-to-win mentality. He went back to 45-minute workouts in the weight room and eating for taste.
“I’m just gonna enjoy life a little more, do things my way and hopefully get back on the field a little more,” he said.
Even with the injuries last season, he hit .324 with 26 homers and 86 RBIs. Had he been able to play at least 150 games, he said, “I feel like we would’ve been talking about a career year.”
Instead, some now wonder about the durability of a player who has sat out 105 games over the past two seasons. One of the biggest topics of this spring: Chipper Jones’ bunions. To lessen the pain, he is wearing special cushioned insoles in cleats that are one-size too big.
There is, of course, another remedy: “I can have my feet broken and reset. But no doctor in America is going to take the chance on possibly ending my career with that surgery. So nobody’s going to touch me until I get done playing.”
(For what it’s worth, there are only two people I have ever had a conversation with about bunions. The other was my grandmother.)
Jones is bothered that some question whether he can still stay relatively healthy over a season. People have asked him, “Can you play 120 this season?” and he looks at them like they’re from Neptune.
“I don’t go into a season thinking I’m going to play 110 or 120 games,” he said. “I want to play every day. Now, I’m a realist, but 150 is very attainable.”
If Jones hits that mark, the numbers will follow. So will the Braves’ success. With a presumably fixed bullpen — which blew 29 saves last season — Jones said there is no reason why the Braves can’t reclaim the division and go back to the playoffs. He described the closer situation last year as being “like a ticking time bomb. Every game, it was, ‘When is it gonna happen? When is it gonna happen? Boom! It happens.’?”
Jones doesn’t view his own body with the same sense of doom. Now that he has refined his workout and eating habits, everything should be fine.
Permalink | Comments (30) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Cox says he’ll retire after next season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — After a 47-year career that has taken him from player to the front office and eventually back to his true home, the dugout, Bobby Cox can finally see something coming: the end.
When asked jokingly Saturday if he would manage for 10 more seasons, Cox laughed and told the Journal-Constitution, “Not many more. This year and next year, and that’s it.”
It was as emphatic a statement as Cox has ever made about his future. Retirement is a topic he generally keeps blurry, by design.
Cox maintained he could change his mind, but it almost came off as an obligatory qualifier — and ran counter to comments in an otherwise remarkably candid interview.
“I’d like to start doing the things I need to do instead of the things I want to do — like manage,” Cox said. “I don’t need to manage — I want to manage.
“I still love it. I feel great. I want to do this year and next year, and then probably hang it up.
“I haven’t really told anybody this. But it’s what I’m thinking. We might win the World Series this year and next year. But I’m pretty much convinced, that’s it.”
This will be Cox’s 26th season as manager, including 22 with the Braves. He has become as much a staple of spring training in Florida as retirees. But it has taken this long for Cox, who will turn 66 in May, to relate to them. For the first time in his life, he wants to test the calendar without the structure of a baseball season.
When asked what he wants to do, Cox’s answer paralleled that of anybody who would be looking at the next chapter of their life.
“Life things, family things — all of those types of things that for 48 years, I haven’t done because I’ve been doing what I want to do,” he said. “I want to travel. I never have traveled anywhere, really.”
Does any city in particular intrigue him?
“I’ve heard a lot about Prague,” he said.
You had to remind yourself: This is Bobby Cox, “baseball lifer,” as Chipper Jones calls him. He is the only manager Jones has ever had in the majors. There have been times when Jones had to wonder if Cox would outlast him. So it’s understandable that he was taken aback Saturday.
“It’s very surprising — I didn’t think he would ever retire,” Jones said.
“Everybody in this organization is pretty close to the vest with their future intentions. For Bobby to have come out and offered that to you tells you he must be pretty serious about it.”
Even general manager John Schuerholz, who elevates looking unfazed to an art form, was surprised. Schuerholz said he has “friendly conversations” with Cox every winter about his future. But the discussion generally doesn’t advance beyond the GM asking, “How are you feeling?” and Cox responding, “Great.”
“He knows how I feel: He can have this job as long as he wants,” Schuerholz said.
“I know he’s driven to do this and is a success at it because he loves it. When he got here the first day, he was dressing for practice even before the players were here. He was putting on his baseball pants and he said, ‘I love putting these things on.’ And [Friday], we were playing Pittsburgh in the second spring training game, and we won because we had a number of minor-leaguers playing hard. Bobby reached out and shook my hand about the win. He loves this stuff.”
In many ways, this spring is like any other for Cox. He loves his team. He can’t wait for the season. His enthusiasm hasn’t diminished. But it turns out, even he eventually thinks about what comes next.
How will he live without the real seasons — winter, spring, summer, fall — not being mere a time frame for a baseball season.
“I don’t know how I’m going to react,” he said.
He talks about his farm in Adairsville. “We’re going to put some cows there eventually when I retire,” he said. “[Wife] Pam wants her horses. We used to have horses and chickens and goats and all that stuff.”
With a laugh, he says she has been pushing him to retire “for the last 10 years.”
“I’d just like in a couple of years to just say, ‘Hey, get in the car, we’re going to up to Maine,’ or wherever. Not having to be somewhere all the time.”
Would he take a drive to a major league city?
“I’ll still be watching,” he said. “But, no, I’m not going to say, ‘You want to go to a game tonight?’ “
Permalink | | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Steroids raid casts wide net
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Just like that, you have a syringe threatening to burst the bubble of the feel-good story that was Gary Matthews Jr. during last baseball season.
Then you have Richard A. Rydze, a respected team doctor for the Pittsburgh Steelers, telling SI.com that his purchases of drugs from a shady Internet pharmacy were for elderly patients, not for overly ambitious football players.
You also have SI.com saying Evander Holyfield (or shall we say Evan Fields?) joined Matthews in this new craze of getting steroids online.
Jose Canseco’s name surfaced again this week. So did that of Jason Grimsley, noted more for juicing than pitching.
Plus, to hear the Times Union of Albany, N.Y., tell it, the feds have discovered that performance-enhancing drugs may have been fraudulently prescribed by Internet pharmacies to everybody from current and past NFL and baseball players to folks in colleges and high schools.
Even a former Mr. Olympia champion has been cited in the probe.
Thus the question: Are many of these folks guilty regarding the use, purchase or sale of performance-enhancing drugs, or are most of them innocent? As for the answer, it doesn’t matter. Whether it’s Matthews, Rydze, Canseco, Grimsley, Holyfield or Fields, the names will keep coming, because this isn’t a temporary thing.
This is a forever thing.
When I say “this,” I’m referring to the fact that athletes and their handlers have sought to find an edge forever. Either that, or they’ve been accused of doing as much forever. All you need to know is that more than a few Greeks consumed sheep’s testicles in the shadows with hopes of increasing their testosterone levels before the ancient Olympic Games.
During the modern Olympic Games, U.S. marathoner Thomas Hicks nearly died in 1904 after he sprinted to a gold medal. Down the stretch, he consumed large quantities of strychnine (later banned from the Games) and brandy (not exactly the same as guzzling Gatorade).
Plus, there were those eras when amphetamines became the primary elixir in sports. Baseball players called them “greenies,” and they were as prevalent in the middle of clubhouses as bubblegum and chewing tobacco.
How about Mark McGwire and his fraudulent muscles? Courtesy of his non-responsive testimony before Congress, he suggested that his Popeye arms came from something stronger than the combination of andro and spinach.
Later, cyclist Floyd Landis tested positive for an elevated testosterone level, which means the primary reason he was zipping around so quickly wasn’t because of a good tailwind.
That’s why, when it comes to the use of anabolic steroids, designer steroids, human growth hormone (HGH) or whatever else is rattling around the minds of scientists during this millennium, you have the following truth for the ages: Anybody who does anything in sports at any level and on any part of the earth is a suspect.
Is that fair?
No.
Is that just the way it is?
Uh-huh. So every day, you’ll have somebody new sharing the light of suspicion with Barry Bonds. That somebody for the moment is Holyfield, Fields or whoever we’re talking about here.
According to a report this week on SI.com, law enforcement documents show that the former boxing four-time heavyweight champion of the world used “Evan Fields” as an alias. That report says Fields has the same birth date as Holyfield (Oct. 19, 1962), and that Fields has nearly the same address in Fayette County and exactly the same telephone number as Holyfield.
In fact, when those with SI.com dialed the number listed for Fields, they said Holyfield answered.
Why is this important? Well, according to that report, Fields was involved with one of those Internet pharmacies that have the feds ready to put folks in the slammer.
Holyfield said he never has taken steroids and that this controversy has nothing to do with him. Yes, it does. He’s an athlete, and if you’re an athlete in today’s climate of performance-enhancing drugs, you are guilty until proven innocent.
Permalink | | Categories: Braves / MLB, Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Mark Bradley’s Friday Fallout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Every Friday through the regular season, Mark looks at who’s up, who’s down and what you should be watching as the countdown continues to the Final Four in Atlanta.
THE TOP SEEDS
If the season ended today, here’s what the top four seeds in each region should look like:
• SAN ANTONIO
1: Ohio State
2: Florida
3: Memphis
4: Virginia Tech
• SAN JOSE
1: UCLA
2: Texas A&M
3: Georgetown
4: Nevada
• EAST RUTHERFORD
1: North Carolina
2: Pittsburgh
3: Washington St.
4: UNLV
• ST. LOUIS
1: Kansas
2: Wisconsin
3: Southern Illinois
4: Maryland
RISING: Kansas
Kansas has won seven in a row, can win the Big 12 outright by beating Texas on Saturday and looks more like a Final Four team with every week. Still, having been upset by the Bucknell Bison and the Bradley Braves in the past two NCAAs, the Jayhawks want no part of any BB — the Butler Bulldogs, say — this time.
FALLING: Florida
Is it boredom? Is it the pressure that comes from defending a title? Whatever the explanation, Florida needs to correct something posthaste. The Gators have lost three of four, and to secure the No. 1 NCAA seed that once seemed its manifest destiny, Florida now needs to win the SEC tournament.
WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
• Colonial Athletic Association championship game, 7 p.m. Monday, ESPN
Some project the CAA getting three NCAA berths, which lessens the stakes a bit. Still, it’s worth recalling that George Mason, which reached the Final Four last season, needed to rally to beat Georgia State in the CAA quarterfinals.
MID-MAJOR OF THE WEEK: Gonzaga
Gonzaga is the most famous mid-major going, and now the Bulldogs offer a case study in the perils of being a mid-major. They played a tough nonconference schedule and won the West Coast regular-season title but still need to win the conference tournament. An RPI of 71 doesn’t buy NCAA at-large passage.
FUN WITH NUMBERS
Three, according to the Associated Press, is the number of live chickens allegedly thrown on the court by Kansas State students before the Feb. 19 home game against Kansas. (K-State equates a chicken with a Jayhawk.) PETA protested, and now K-State has banned the chicken ritual. FYI: Kansas won the game 71-62.
NAMES TO KNOW
• Hofstra’s Loren Stokes and Antoine Agudio
Guards Loren Stokes and Antoine Agudio of Hofstra are the only teammates in Division I averaging 20 points apiece. The Pride, 22-8, probably need to reach the Colonial tournament final to have an at-large NCAA chance, and what opponent likely looms in the quarterfinals? Why, it’s George Mason.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley