THE WEEKLY 5-COUNT

By Chris Datres

1 I don’t want to pat myself on the back but…ok, I’ll pat myself on the back. For the first time in memory, I correctly picked all eight remaining combatants in the NCAA Tournament. And while I wasn’t able to nail the entire Final Four, I’ll hang my hat on the underdog pick of Michigan State. I’ll start my weekend recap with that game. Going in, I thought Michigan State could beat Louisville if they made the Cardinals play a much slower game. Mission accomplished. Sparty held the Cards to 52 points, their second-lowest output of the season. MSU held Terrence Williams to a measly 5 points and only allowed the Cards to attempt 47 shots. That’s defense at its finest in East Lansing. As a result, there will be a huge green wave making the 90-mile trip to Detroit this weekend for the festivities. And yet, Sparty nearly didn’t make it out of the regional semifinal game alive. Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich ate up the Spartans for 31 minutes much like they did in their wins over Dayton and North Dakota State. Finally, MSU got back to playing their brand of basketball and were able to shut down KU’s two-headed monster in the final nine minutes, allowing them to combine for six points. If Michigan State continues their success for just one more game, I might have to send a little pool winnings donation to the S Club.

2 I’m not sure there’s much more to say about the dominance of North Carolina in this tournament. They’ve looked four teams in the eye and turned out their lights in impressive fashion all four times. The NCAA Tournament is often determined by who has the best point guard and Carolina’s Ty Lawson has run miles ahead of the competition. In three tournament games, Lawson has 61 points, 20 assists, and 2 turnovers. That’s pretty good for someone playing on a toe so hurt that he had to sit out an ACC Tournament loss and the first round demolition of Radford. When he’s back in the game, it takes the pressure off of guys like Danny Green and Wayne Ellington and allows them to freely run within their offense.

3 As good as North Carolina has been going through this tournament, I still think the team playing the best is UCONN. They toyed with Purdue in the first 29 minutes before finally spacing out to a 12-point win. On Saturday, they used many of the lessons they learned from playing against Louisville and attacked Missouri’s press to the tune of a 13-2 initial lead. However, Missouri gamely fought back and even took the lead at one point in the second half. But Kemba Walker, the man replacing the injured Jerome Dyson, stepped up in a big way, scoring 12 points in the final 13 minutes to allow UCONN to break a 50-50 tie and walk away with a 7-point victory. When Dyson went out, there was much concern in Husky country about who would step up to fill the void. A.J. Price filled it perfectly in the first two rounds and Walker took over in the regional final. They look like a pretty sure bet to make it to Monday night against Carolina but more on that shortly.

4 And then there was the best game of the tournament thus far. Pitt and Villanova traded jabs back and forth throughout the 40 minutes on Saturday night like it was an old 15-round heavyweight on scrambled HBO in the 1980’s. They say that familiarity breeds contempt and these teams knew more than they cared to about each other. That led to a game which Verne Lundquist called “a cousin” of the epic Duke-Kentucky game in Philly in 1992. He should know since he called that game as well. Pitt had this game on and they let it get away from them. Up by 4 with 2:56 left, they had the ball and Nova was on their heels. Another basket would have pushed the lead to 6 or even 7 and I believe the Wildcats would have called it a night mentally. Instead, Jermaine Dixon committed two bonehead mistakes. The first, he crossed halfcourt against the Nova press and immediately picked up his dribble. When he got swarmed by the defense, he coughed up the ball, leading to a Dwayne Anderson layup. Had it just been that mental mistake, it may not have been so bad. Instead, Dixon compounds his gaffe by committing a weak foul on Anderson who then went to the line to complete the 3-point play, cutting the lead to 1. On the next possession, Sam Young turned the ball over and Corey Fisher scored on a backdoor layup at the other end to give Nova the lead again. So within 45 seconds, Pitt went from being up 4 with the ball to being down 1 and now the emotional lift was on the Wildcats’ side. That momentum shift culminated with Nova getting that 3-point lead in the last 20 seconds. And then they went brain dead. In an end-of-game fouling situation, the offense just has to get the ball inbounds. And since Villanova was 21 of 22 from the line at that point, it was a pretty good bet they were going to increase the lead from the line. Instead, Reggie Redding heaves a home run pass that Dante Cunningham can’t track down and that leads to Levance Fields getting to the line to tie the game. OK, so this game’s going to overtime, right? Well, Pitt committed the mortal defensive sin that cost them their season. When there’s five seconds left and the other team has to go the length of the court, the inbounds pass has to force the offense to go AWAY from their basket. Instead, they play IN FRONT of Scottie Reynolds and allow him to run free to catch the outlet pass. That left two Pitt players in the frontcourt to stop his drive. And that’s where the next mistake was made. For whatever reason, DeJuan Blair was at the top of the key instead of back in the lane, and that allowed Reynolds to sprint right past him. The one thing coaches always tell a guard in an end-of-game situation is to go to the basket because defenses will shy away, not wanting to commit a foul. Sure enough, Reynolds kept going and Gilbert Brown put his arms up in a meek attempt to block his path. Reynolds got the shot to fall and sent Nova to Detroit. It was an absolutely pitiful final 3 minutes out of a Pitt team that I thought was more disciplined than that.

5 Saturday night’s first game is UCONN-Michigan State. Jim Calhoun is already playing the ‘us against the world’ card with his team in practice this week. They’ll likely have to deal with 50,000 fans in Sparty’s corner. Adversity is nothing new for the Huskies in the last month. They’ve played without their starting 2-guard, played a first-round game without their coach, and have weathered all the talk about the potential recruiting violations within the athletic department. All they’ve done is play good basketball. As long as they keep playing their tempo of basketball, I can’t really see them losing to Michigan State. But, MSU beat Louisville because they slowed the game down and made the Cards play a grind-it-out style that isn’t found anywhere in the Big East. If they can pull Thabeet away from the basket on pick-and-roll plays, it might open up some lanes for Kalin Lucas to penetrate. Offensively, Ibok and Green won’t be able to do anything against Thabeet and Jeff Adrien. But they could badger them into foul trouble and that would be the best thing possible for MSU’s chances. I picked Michigan State to win this particular game with UCONN when the brackets came out and I’m going to stick with it. But the only way that Sparty can make me look like a genius is if they can succeed at slowing down the pace and limiting the turnovers against a feisty UCONN defense. In game 2, I don’t see any way that Carolina loses to Villanova. That’s not to sound arrogant in thinking that it’ll be a total blowout but I think NC sees this as an appetizer to the dinner that has been there’s for the taking since they lost to Kansas in last year’s semifinal. Villanova doesn’t really have a matchup against Tyler Hansbrough down low and I don’t know if anyone can hang with Lawson defensively. On the offensive end, Nova can level the playing field if Reynolds and Clark and Stokes and Anderson knock down their 3-pointers. But really, can they match the output that the Tarheels are sure to put up at the offensive end? I don’t see it happening and it will set up a rematch of two teams who faced off in this same venue earlier in the season with NC winning big.

BONUS
Let me speak for a minute on the firing last week of Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie. First off, my mother is a huge Kentucky fan so I have a bit of an idea of how that fanbase’s mentality works. This is a group who disliked Tubby Smith despite the fact that he got the Cats a championship in his first year. It was always one complaint after another. It was Tubby’s fault that the Cats allowed Dwyane Wade to go for a triple-double in 2003 to knock them out of a trip to the Final Four. It was somehow Tubby’s fault that they couldn’t beat Michigan State in regional final games in 1999 and 2005. Tubby finally got the right offer and bolted that nuthouse for Minnesota two years ago. In basketball terms, you have to be crazy to leave Kentucky for Minnesota. So UK hired Billy Gillispie who parlayed a great run with Texas A&M in the 2007 tournament to get that job. It didn’t take long for the UK faithful to turn on him. Kentucky struggled to an 18-11 regular season mark in ‘07-’08 and followed that with a loss to lowly Georgia in the SEC Tournament and a first-round exit against Marquette in the Big Dance. This year, they thought it might be different but somehow the Cats turned a 16-4 start into an NIT berth. If you miss the NCAA Tournament at Kentucky, you’re going to have to deal with some incensed people. There were plenty of reports that Gillispie wasn’t the most hospitable person off the court which is unfortunately, a big problem at a big-time school like Kentucky. But then, he also has to deal with 25,000 coaches in the stands at Rupp Arena every night not to mention the millions across the state who think they know what’s best for the team. As a result, the fans have once again received their wish and Gillispie is gone. Many thought that they’d finally land Florida coach Billy Donovan, who spurned them two years ago. But Donovan is smart enough to stay put and not deal with that psychiatric ward in Lexington. John Calipari, on the other hand, craves the challenge of stepping up to Kentucky. To me, this marriage is perfect. Calipari has a history of bringing in one-and-done players who have zero interest in the education a college provides. All Kentucky and their fans care about is the bottom line - wins and losses. And yes, Calipari was able to keep the NCAA’s nose out of his business in Memphis. He must have learned from the mistakes that were made at UMASS that caused the vacation of their 1996 Final Four appearance. But when you combine his recruiting production with the delusional mindset of the UK boosters, I wouldn’t be surprised if the NCAA isn’t summoned to Lexington within five years.