Pure Madness
or Why I Only Wrote About the Tournament Once
I was going to try to write at least three times about March Madness, but seeing as how I’m in law school and had a huge paper due, it took over the majority of my time. So now that it’s out of the way, on to my condensed NCAA Tournament column! There’s not much about the first couple rounds of the tournament because I’ve forgotten a lot of it (not that memorable), I’ve had a lot going on (see above), and frankly, I really didn’t feel like looking up a bunch of game scores and statistics (I’ve done enough research for a while).
FIRST WEEKEND – ROAD TO THE SWEET SIXTEEN
No Valparaiso, no Santa Clara, no Davidson, no George Mason. No Cinderella teams at all. The only team seeded 10 or lower to make the Sweet Sixteen was Arizona, but a team with 25 straight tournament appearances, four Final Fours, and a national championship is not exactly an underdog. Just one year after every number 1 seed made the Final Four, 2009 marked the first year that the top 3 seeds in every region advanced to the Sweet Sixteen. The upside (in theory) was that just as an all-#1 Final Four made for a tremendous championship weekend last year, a no-underdog Sweet Sixteen would make for a more interesting tournament. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
I’m definitely eating some crow this time around, after my scathing review of Hansbrough, my misguided faith in Pitt, and my belief that Griffin was clearly the superior college player. Pitt needed a 25-footer from Lavance Fields just to get out of the Sweet Sixteen, then couldn’t stop Villanova from going coast to coast for the game winner at the end of regulation, falling short of the Final Four again.
On a slightly ridiculous side note, the ‘Nova-Pitt game was by far the best game in the tournament, which was surprisingly devoid of either high drama or Cinderella stories. That is to say, it was one of the most boring tournaments ever.
Carolina-Oklahoma was by far the most intriguing matchup of the tournament – on paper. Last year’s Naismith winner head-to-head against this year’s Naismith suitor. This was the game where everybody was going to realize just how much better Blake Griffin is than Tyler Hansbrough. I even recorded the game to watch later because I had a basketball game that night. Of course, the gym had TVs with the game on, and it was a snoozefest from what I caught. Only one thing really jumped out at me. In the first half, Blake Griffin scored zero points in the 11 minutes Hansbrough was on the court. The bow-legged farmboy* from Poplar Bluff, MO shut down Blake Griffin, who had dominated everybody all year. Maybe Psycho-T will do okay in the NBA.
* Hansbrough’s father is an orthopedic surgeon. Orthopedic surgeons are one of the highest paid types of doctors. Even in Poplar Bluff. So Tyler Hansbrough is definitely not a farmboy. But see how being a white dude from Middle America means everybody just assumes you’re some sort of rural hick? You probably didn’t even consider that Psycho-T wasn’t a farmboy. Until I put an asterisk behind it.
CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND – TOBACCO ROAD
The 2009 NCAA Tournament belonged to the North Carolina Tar Heels. Sure, the Michigan State storyline was intriguing, particularly because the Final Four was in the D this year, but the national media blew this out of proportion. First, Michigan isn’t like Connecticut or North Dakota, in that they have multiple state schools with major sports pedigree. Michigan is split between Wolverine and Spartan fans. The entire state of Michigan wasn’t going to galvanize around Sparty this March. Besides, whether State had made the Final Four and the championship game or not, Detroit still would have gotten the same economic boost from hosting the event. The Spartans didn’t cause Detroit to make more money. They didn’t sell more tickets. So I’m still trying to figure out exactly how MSU winning the tournament was somehow going to magically fix the economic wasteland that is the Mitten these days. (Hey, I live here! I can poke fun.)
State’s run through the tournament was phenomenal. They beat the defending national champion Jayhawks, then two straight number-one seeds in Louisville and UConn. Louisville was the number one overall seed in the tournament, and the Spartans took it to them in spectacular fashion. They outplayed them from the opening tip. Goran Suton had a career first half, knocking down four three-pointers, and basically running the offense. Every play went through him in one way, shape, or form. When the Cardinals keyed on him for the second half, it opened things up for Summers, Lucas and Green. This was the best game I saw State play all year. Next up, they beat UConn, who hung around for the majority of the game, but mailed it in for the last three minutes, once they figured the Spartans had it in the bag. That’s the only way I can describe it. The Huskies didn’t foul, they weren’t aggressive, they just flat-out quit. For a team that was top-ranked for a substantial portion of the regular season, it was a remarkable tank job. Which, of course, put Sparty in the championship game.
I’d been waiting for the Spartans to perform their fabulous, show-stopping meltdown trick since the Sweet Sixteen. I figured we’d see it against Kansas. They let me down. Certainly they’d pull it out against Louisville. Nope. Oh, I get it, they’re saving it for Detroit, so they can do it in front of the home crowd. Not against UConn. They just kept on winning. And proving me wrong. Meanwhile, Carolina just dissected Villanova in the late game on Saturday. The Wildcats had no chance. They hung around for a while, and even made a run in the second half, but couldn’t overcome the Tar Heels’ overwhelming firepower.
This, of course, sets up the ‘conflicting destinies’ theory. First, Tyler Hansbrough decided to return for his senior season. Then Danny Green, Ty Lawson, and Wayne Ellington joined him. So here was the destiny of North Carolina: Small-town white boy returns for his senior year, even though he was the player of the year last year, because he lost in the Final Four, and can’t go out like that. His decision inspires his teammates to come back with him and accomplish something special. A national championship is their destiny.
Later, Michigan State starts winning games in the tournament. First they knock of Kansas, and people start paying attention. Then they obliterate Louisville, and the whole country takes notice. Then the pundits put Michigan State and Detroit together, and start spouting nonsense. The Spartans can resurrect the state of Michigan! They can be the first team to win a championship in their home state for the first time since 1975! It’s destiny!
Here’s the problem. Only one team can take the trophy home. So there can’t be two teams destined to win the title. Who prevails? Well, look at the storylines above. Which one do you think will win out? The story of destiny that revolves entirely around the team and the players on it, and was set in motion by the team almost a year ago, or the one that sprouted up just last week, and was entirely a concoction of media hysterics? Yeah, I thought so. But a lot of people didn’t. Jim Rome picked the Spartans. So did Greg Anthony and Seth Davis, just moments before tip-off. The hysterical, media-created ‘destiny’ that the Spartans seemed so certain to fulfill duped a lot of people.
But Michigan State still hadn’t performed their most impressive trick. And when they finally unveiled it, wow, what a doozy! Out of the gate, State tried running with Carolina. They pushed the ball up the floor. More to the point, they turned the ball over. A lot. This was the performance I had been expecting out of the Spartans for the last four games: the game where they stand around, force shots, and just get outplayed end-to-end. A complete and utter collapse. Given that Tom Izzo himself said that if his team played their best game and Carolina played their best game, that his team would lose, why would you start of the game by baiting the Heels into running the ball and crushing them? It makes no sense. The only way MSU was going to win that game was by playing deliberately slow and methodical, trying to take Carolina out of its rhythm. Instead, they tried to beat UNC at their own game, and got humiliated.
Izzo said to his team that he wanted to try to save his timeouts, and didn’t want to burn them just to stop runs. So his team had to knock down shots to keep Carolina honest. Which they didn’t, because they were jacking ill-advised threes and running nothing that remotely resembled an offense. They couldn’t get the ball inside, they couldn’t get open for clean looks, they couldn’t do anything. Carolina’s lead grew to ten and then more, and by the midway point of the first half, the Heels led 31-11. Everything was going Carolina’s way. From loose balls to rebounds, UNC was all over everything. They dominated every facet of the game, including defense and rebounding, the two things that Michigan State utilized to get to the championship. Lawson had eight steals, a championship-game record. One of them was a video game steal, where he ran right in front of a Spartan and stole the lazy inbound pass for an easy jumper. That doesn’t happen in real life. But it did in this game. The Spartans couldn’t take care of the ball, and it led to a whole bunch of Tar Heel points. It was abundantly clear at the end of the first half, with Carolina leading 55-34, that these Tar Heels were much bigger, stronger, and better at every position than the remarkably overmatched Spartans, who had just played the entire first half like a bunch of deer caught in the headlights of this national stage. It was also clear that Carolina had been here before, because they were poised and crisp. 55 points was a first-half title-game record, and the 21-point lead was the largest halftime advantage in the history of the championship game.
The game wasn’t near as close as the final score of 89-72 indicated. Carolina led from the opening tip. They had a double-digit lead for the final 35 minutes. In fact, they had a double-digit lead in 154 of the 240 minutes they played in the tournament. They won every game by 12 or more points. They flat-out destroyed the field this year. Nobody could touch them. It was Carolina’s year. The destiny of this team was put in motion nearly a year ago, and it culminated in their coronation as national champions on April 6th. They reached the pinnacle of college basketball, which was their goal since losing to Kansas in the Final Four last season. Hansbrough now has the feather in the cap that is his NCAA career. He has a Naismith award, holds the ACC scoring record, the NCAA free-throw record, a 4-0 record at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and now a national title. His four years in Chapel Hill will be viewed favorably as one of the greatest college careers of all-time.
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