The second game of Semifinal Saturday wasn’t pretty, but it yielded the prettiest result possible. Michigan’s presence makes Monday’s final much more enticing. Nobody really wanted a fourth installment of Louisville-Syracuse, not even the folks who preside over what’s left of the Big East, not with both member schools bound for the ACC.
Instead the championship game brings a new opponent for Louisville, which had to move heaven and earth to outlast Wichita State on Saturday. Michigan is a sleek team from the brawny Big Ten, and if that sounds like an oxymoron … well, who ever said college basketball is a repository of great good sense?
The Wolverines solved the eternal riddle of the Syracuse zone, at least for a while, and that’s usually the story of every Syracuse game. If the other team handles the zone, it tends to win. If it doesn’t, it falls as flat as Indiana (50 points in 40 minutes) and Marquette (39 in 40) did in the East Regional.
This one seemed close to being settled after 20 minutes. The Wolverines scored 36 first-half points — yes, nearly as many as Marquette managed in the entire East final — with only three of them coming from point guard Trey Burke, the national player of the year.
This isn’t to say the zone didn’t make the Wolverines think. It did. The Wolverines fell behind 14-9 after three consecutive possessions yielded three missed 3-pointers. That’s what the zone does: It dares the other guy to beat it over the top. More than half of Michigan’s first-half shots — 17 of 29 — were treys. That it made six of the 17 was sufficient to requirements.
Two 3-pointers by Michigan sub Michael Albrecht didn’t carry quite the oomph as the two by Louisville sub Tim Henderson in the Cardinals’ back-from-the-brink victory over Wichita State in Game 1, but they served to put distance between the sides in Game 2. Michigan led by 11 at the break, and with its pitch-and-putt offense Syracuse isn’t built for comebacks.
If nothing else, Michigan’s success against the zone showed the world that John Beilein is among the best sketcher of X’s and O’s extant. He got his Wolverines to do what Indiana, a more highly regarded Big Ten entity, could not. For all the jumpers Michigan hoisted, these were mostly jumpers well-considered. The ball would go inside and then back out, and the Wolverines scored enough points (12 in the lane in the first half) in the lane to keep Syracuse from cheating even more toward the perimeter.
But Jim Boeheim hasn’t won more than 900 games by being the dimmest bulb in the firmament. He plays that zone — every game, every half, every possession — because the darn thing works. And even when an opponent looks as if it’s handling the Syracuse D, that zone can have an aggregate effect. (Kind of like the Louisville press, only without the backcourt steals.)
Remember those 36 Michigan first-half points? With six minutes to play, the Wolverines had managed only 12 more. James Southerland actually tried a 3-pointer that would have tied the score at 48, but it clanged.
Surely surprised at still being ahead after doing so little for so long, the Wolverines roused themselves. The key play was a tip-in of a Burke miss by Glenn Robinson III, whose dad was an Atlanta Hawk for a season. That made the score 51-45, and it underscored the flaw in the Boeheim method: His teams are historically bad at rebounding because defenders in a zone don’t have individual block-out responsibilities.
Syracuse should have died when point guard Michael Carter-Williams fouled out setting a screen with 1:14 remaining. He left having scored only two points, and all around it was a horrid day for all the hyped point guards in this Final Four. Peyton Siva of Louisville and Malcolm Armstead of Wichita State had one basket apiece in the opener, and Burke and Carter-Williams matched that meager output in the nightcap.
Even without Carter-Williams, the ’Cuse cut it to one. Michigan’s Mitch McGary missed three free throws (one after a Syracuse lane violation), and Southerland made a 3-pointer to make the score 57-56. Inside the final 30 seconds, the Orange had the ball with a chance to nose ahead. But Jordan Morgan slid in front of Brandon Triche to draw a charge.
There was one last chance for Syracuse. Its starting backcourt had fouled out, but with 15.7 seconds left, it inbounded needing a trey to tie. Instead Trevor Cooney shot from the lane, missed and watched Morgan dunk at the other end to put this semifinal, at blessed last, to bed.
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