I. Anticipation
With the NCAA tournament (March Madness) beginning only two days after the high school team I help coach was eliminated from the California state tournament, I figured I’d finally have a chance catch up on what’s happening with college ball. After all, even with the NCAA’s being increasingly exposed as The Evil Empire, c’mon, ya hadda love college ball. If you knew anything at all, you preferred it to the NBA, scorned those who did not. But not in the newly-dawned Steph Curry Era!
To the delight of both devoted basketball fans and late-comers to the bandwagon, Golden State’s Warriors won their first 24 games, and eventually extended their home court win streak to a record-setting fifty-four games. They are doing it with brio, spiced of course with Curry, as they approach a record-setting season high for team wins. Using a small line-up of incredible shooters and ball-handlers, they are trashing records for three-point shots so brutally as to suggest sweeping but unflattering analogies–both foreign and domestic–in today’s political landscape. They can seem as unstoppable as: take your pick, Donald Trump or ISIS.
With world and domestic politics so frighteningly chaotic, it is ever more difficult to take comfortable refuge in sport, but there is always an overlap, a cross-fertilization, between the battles of life and those enacted on the playing fields, with political figures like the late Jack Kemp and the too-late-with-his-hat in the ring Bill Bradley bridging the gap, and offering some of us the perhaps-naive conviction that success on the court will make reasonably bright athletes into stellar statesmen.
In a season in which no NCAA team had distinguished itself above others ([1,2], it was as if Curry had hijacked the joy of college ball. It has been left to Oscar Robertson to voice skepticism about how Curry is defended. Yet, retaining the illusion that I could milk cosmic insights about the current geopolitical landscape/universe from reasoning analogically, I looked to get involved. Even the swollen two hour selection committee show wasn’t enough to deter me from my appointed task. Neither was the exclusion of controversial Australian-born freshman phenom Ben Simmons, as a result of LSU’s shameful tank job (a 71-38 loss) in its conference tournament’s Final.
II. Winnowing The Field
Watching Day One’s games somewhat at random, what stood out was how the commercials continued to swell in length, making many otherwise entertaining games unwatchably long. The incessant branding extends to everything. It subtly–but inexorably–piles up on itself, determined to wear down the resistance of the weary but unwary. Particular moments, like interviews, charts, and time-outs, are all “brought to you by” a variety of corporate sponsors, whose names adorn studio props and are repeated endlessly, as well as flashed constantly across the screen. In the course of a less than one minute interview with Yale Coach James Jones, the “Capitol One” sign was continually flashing, as Jones espoused–and swooshed–in his Nike shirt.
The actual commercials, numbing and pounding (as brother-in-resistance Walt Frazier might put it) in longer blocks, can at least be avoided, whereas these other, more insidious ones seep through to the techno-core of millennials and other like-wired folk, seamlessly appropriating and incorporating John Wooden’s slogans, such as his definition of success. Wooden’s reputation has merged with Duke Coach K’s carefully projected image. It’s always about Good and Evil: Johnny Wooden and Bobby Knight.[3]
But the games themselves featured such incredible athleticism that one wanted to forgive the corporate powers their excesses, excuse the system for its many injustices. The players are the thing! Yes, I applaud the O’Bannon lawsuit, but, damn, the more obviously corrupt the system proves to be, the better these muthafuckers get!
With all that parity among the top franchises, Cal and Yale were the teams generating the most early interest, because of the sexual scandals that revolved around each of them. Cal had been decimated by injuries and demoralized by the scandal generated by an assistant coach’s foolishly blatant advances toward a female reporter, and collapsed in their first round game against Hawaii, despite starting two freshmen who are probable NBA lottery picks. That assistant coach was let go, but rehired within weeks by the University of Nevada.
Yale’s missing captain, who had been expelled for “sexual misconduct,” was shamelessly and indiscrete-ly discussed on the telecast, though he had not been charged with any crime; he had been expelled from his school, having been accorded no measure of due process. Ironically, after Yale’s “other guard” Makai Mason had engineered a first round upset of Baylor (with as sensational a game as anyone had until the Final Four, save perhaps one by Oklahoma star Buddy Hield), Coach Jones described Mason as a “bad little man.”
Day One (after the four play-in games that reduce the field from 68 to a mathematically manageable 64) produced the excitement of Middle Tennessee’s upset of Michigan State, a Number Two Seed that many thought deserved a Number One. The many upsets (thirteen of thirty-two in the first round) created great excitement, but were these teams good enough to sustain interest, and to keep winning, as Yale, against Duke [4] was not?
By the time the Round of 16 came, most of the upstarts had been weeded out, with Syracuse the exception, and a very odd one, given their usual place in the pantheon. In Syracuse’s tumultuous 19-13 regular season, Coach Jim Boeheim–forty years at the helm–was forced to sit out nine games, during which his team went 4-5. They lost their first four ACC games, and five of their last six, and were fortunate even to have been selected for the tourney, no less accorded a Ten Seed.
There were startling come-backs galore. Northern Iowa had gotten to the Second Round on the strength of a half-court buzzer beater, but then could not hold a twelve point lead with less than a minute to play against Texas A&M. Evoking the ghost of Reggie Miller, Notre Dame turned a three point deficit into a 61-56 win against Wisconsin in less than half a minute. Wisconsin itself had gotten there with a three-point buzzer beater. Straining credibility even further, in the Elite Eight, Syracuse’s 21-2 run turned a fifteen point Virginia lead with under ten minutes remaining into a 68-62 upset victory.
III. Final Four
By the time of the Final Four, of necessity (with three telecasts to choose from), story lines had emerged as resplendent as the shimmering colors that wafted their way to viewers from the raised Astrodome floor. There was ample history, the game being played in arena where the first nationally televised regular season game took place: Houston’s 1968 win over UCLA, with Elvin Hayes besting a vision-compromised Lew Alcindor, and it was the 50th anniversary of Texas Western’s beating Adolph Rupp’s all-white Kentucky team that started no-one over 6’5”.[5]
The semi-finals offered what figured to be an especially entertaining match-up, featuring two outstanding senior guards: Oklahoma’s Bahamian-born Player of the Year candidate Buddy Hield, and Villanova’s Ryan Arcidiacono. In the “other” semi-final [6], Syracuse faced the sole remaining One Seed, North Carolina, the only team that seemed capable of approaching Kentucky-style domination. (In a tournament that has in recent years been dominated by One and Done freshmen, four of Oklahoma’s starters had been together three full seasons and over 100 games.)
Defying the tendency of large dome-like stadiums to throw off perspective and lower shooting percentages, Villanova used 12-0 run to sprint to a 42-28 halftime lead, with their guards (Arcidiacono and Josh Hart, who guarded Hield) going 11-12, while combining for 25 points. It was not too early to begin invoking the perfect game that Villanova threw at Patrick Ewing’s Georgetown Hoyas in 1985.
The second half featured a 25-0 Villanova run to a shocking 95-51 win. Villanova shot 71% overall, next best ever in a Final Four game to that 1985 squad’s 78.6% in the Final. Amazingly, earlier in the season, Oklahoma had beaten the Wild Cats 78-55.
Villanova? Before the tournament I’d watched very little college ball, yet serendipity had befriended me: just briefly, I had tuned in to watch Villanova earlier in the season. Two players stood out: Arcidiacono and three-point bomber Kris Jenkins, along with another senior, the 6’11” Daniel Ochefu, who looks like an amalgam of Clifford Ray and Roy Tarpley. Arciadiacono’s game, I thought, uncannily mirrored that of our high school team’s star player.
In the other (ACC) semi-final, as if to flaunt their newly constituted romance with the classroom, Syracuse started two graduate students and a senior. For North Carolina’s academic props, TBS trumped the NCAA’s favorite euphemism by dubbing star guard Marcus Paige a “scholar-athlete,” as Paige has a double major.
The Tar Heels’ 83-66 win over Syracuse (whom they had already beaten twice in the regular season) was not a rout, but was equally impressive. Talent, size, and depth all wore Carolina Blue. The Tar Heels looked so dominant–and confident–that had Villanova not flexed muscles no-one knew they had, we might have been envisioning another 1985 David and Goliath scenario [7].
They had proved themselves able to shoot over 70% in a Final Four game [8], but remained underdogs, despite their unbelievable tournament run, which included beating One-seeded Kansas, and victory margins of 30, 19, 23, and 44, before meeting North Carolina (which had also won each of its games decisively, by anywhere from fourteen and nineteen points).
With its greater size and hallowed program history, North Carolina did come in like Goliath. Several times, it seemed as if Carolina would spurt and pull away. Nova’s tenacious defense kept them close, even let them take a 14-9 lead, but Carolina, normally a poor three-point shooting team, made seven of nine first half threes, took the lead at 30-29, and extended it to 39-32, before Villanova scored at the halftime buzzer.
With Carolina’s shooting gone suddenly cold, Nova got to a 44-44 tie after six minutes, but it felt like they were barely hanging on. The Tar Heel big men were inexplicably missing easy shots. A seven point Villanova run capped a 35-18 spurt to make it 67-57, with 4:42 remaining. It looked like one could breathe deeply and begin to celebrate. For one shining moment, forget Steph Curry.
Fuck data analytics: you could just feel the momentum surges–back and forth–with Billy Raftery’s sonorous tones rising and falling in remarkable synchrony with the game’s flow. Unabashed ham that he is, Raftery [9], now preaching that “toughness” is paramount, is taking on some of Billy Packer’s gravitas, but without alienating viewers with his pomposity (while Clark Kellogg, relegated to the booth, wears fancy suits and lets Grant Hill handle the Obama impersonations).
A minute, and three possessions later, it was 67-64. Then 70-64. As if to prefigure his incredible heroic double-clutch jumper that nearly forced overtime, Marcus Paige hit a very difficult three to narrow the lead to 70-67; then it was 70-69 with a minute left. And what a minute it was, concluding with Paige’s amazing shot to tie it at 74, and then Jenkins’ buzzer-beater so beautifully set up by Arcidiacono’s advancing the ball, then giving it up, while setting a perfect brush screen for Jenkins, who was plagued with foul trouble throughout, and was limited to just twenty-one minutes.
Was Jenkins gonna make that shot? Of course, he was, and as the replay we will see ad nauseum for the rest of our basketball lives, he always will! Interviewed afterwards, he coolly said he always believed his shot was going in. Aside from destiny and percentages, this was a play that Villanova had practiced for just such a situation.
Add to that the number of times we see guys making incredible shots at moments like that! At such times, players have no other choice but to let fly, and get so focused as to defy logic, and boost their expected percentages dramatically. It is for this reason that I always opt for fouling in the last ten seconds, with a three-point lead: so I found myself screaming at Villanova players to foul Marcus Paige [10] before he could launch that acrobatic double-clutch three that tied the game at 74, making Jenkins’ shot necessary and possible. If Paige were to practice that exact shot unguarded, his percentage would be ridiculously low.
Jenkins’s beautiful–and beautifully set up–shot fittingly capped a tournament in which Villanova had shot 58%, 59%, and 63% in its first three games, just 40% versus Kansas, then their insane 71%, followed by 58% against Carolina. Sophomore reserve Phil Booth had a career high 20 points in 25 minutes, while taking only 7 shots (of great variety, and missing only once) from the floor. Villanova finished 35-5, having faced the highest possible seeds in their last four games, including overall One Seed Kansas.
There had been many great climaxes in NCAA Final games, most notably Lorenzo Charles’ put-back of an errant shot, an air-ball, in 1983, Keith Smart’s game winner in 1987, and Michael Jordan’s in 1982. All pale in comparison. This one was unmatchable, with two dramatic reversals, each worthy of a great climax, at 4.3 and 0.1 seconds remaining.
A Final so great that it obscured all that came before, reprised for us on “One Shining Moment.” Rendered unimportant were the shifting story lines involving scandal and redemption, commercialization, branding, an Evil Empire, corrupt coaches, sex scandals, a Sam Gilbert for every John Wooden. Instead, we had the humble but proud Villanova Coach Jay Wright, blessing upcoming games with “may they be close,” senior-laden teams, and adoptive brothers living in the same house facing each other on separate teams in the Final! [11]
But reality returns quickly. Unlike a Kris Jenkins jumper, frozen in memory and time, one is not generally free to watch without commercial interruption, at least not in real time. Fittingly, there were contrasting takes provided by the ironic juxtaposition implicitly shown in the rapidly changing montage of images that become, like the players, ever quicker and consuming. It was one particular pair of those contrasting icons that TBS showed that said it all: Rollie Massimino and Michael Jordan. I imagine them depicted as cartoon heroes slamming in Turner Sports’s Mixed Martial Arts.
Another smile from serendipity: I not only got to watch the Final with my son, a tradition that we first ceased to honor in 2002, but also with him, to watch ESPN’s grainy black and white tape of the 1966 Texas Western-Kentucky game, the only Final Four at which I have ever been present.
I saw the extraordinary athleticism of yesteryear’s players and was amazed. The bodies were so different from today’s: powerful, but lean; more leg emphasis. Without weight training, God, these guys could run and jump. My son pointed out, though, that the difference in players of today is that they have to do more than run and jump. Back in time, that was all they had to do, he noted; nobody was bumping them.
But no-one’s bumping Curry now either; that’s what Oscar is trying to tell us.
NOTES
1 College basketball seemed to have no team worthy of a national title except, except, for eighteen games, Larry Brown’s NCAA- banned Southern Methodist team. SMU did not lose its first game (to Temple) until January 24, still earlier than Wichita State in 2014 and Kentucky in 2015, both of whom went through the entire regular season without a blemish, before falling in the NCAA Tournament, but if SMU had stayed unbeaten, it would not have had a chance to compete in the NCAA Tournament, having been banned from postseason play in connection with an academic fraud scandal that also saw Coach Brown suspended for 30 percent of their season.
Six different teams held the number one ranking at different times, but none for very long. Even Brown’s SMU squad began losing. No team had less than four losses before the Tournament began, making fans wonder if this was the end of college ball as we knew it. Had we reached the point where only John Calipari’s One and Done model really works?
2 Of the first 12 postseason tournaments, only one top seed claimed its conference’s automatic N.C.A.A. bid. Upsets continued: only ten of thirty-regular season conference champions won their respective conference tournaments, resulting in the exclusion of several worthy “bubble teams,” whose putative spots were taken by teams with poor records who would never have been selected for one of the thirty-six at-large births. How come 36 at-at-large berths and thirty-one conference tournaments, in a 68 team field? Because the Ivy League sends its regular season winner, not having a conference tournament, but that will change as of next year.
3 Among the most venerable and accomplished coaches, Larry Brown, 75, Jimmy Boeheim, 70, and Rick Pitino, 63 have in common their recent suspensions. John Wooden was always portrayed as a near-saint, but knowingly condoned the illegal gifts and compensation bestowed upon his players by UCLA’s famous booster Sam Gilbert.
4 TBS had a field day with the Hill family motif: Calvin Hill, father of Duke’s Grant Hill, was a football star at Yale.
5 Oklahoma’s one non-senior starter, Khadeem Lattin, is the grandson of Texas Western’s iconic center David Lattin.
6 This was the ACC half of the bracket. There were four ACC teams in the Elite Eight, all in the same half of the bracket, thus guaranteeing this venerable conference one finalist. In the Syracuse-North Carolina semi-final, we had two historic coaches whose programs and characters had been tinged by academic scandal, though North Carolina Coach Roy Williams has yet to receive sanctions.
7 For its part, North Carolina had an historic win over another pretty good big man as well: the undefeated 1957 team that defeated Wilt Chamberlain’s Kansas Jay Hawks in triple overtime.
8 There was one other Villanova Final Four, in 1971. There was but there isn’t. That second place finish was subsequently “vacated”, due to Villanova’s star Howard Porter’s having prematurely signed a contract with an agent, thereby forfeiting his right to “amateur status.” point-shaving. Similarly, the 1985 Villanova triumph was later tarnished by self-confessed drug use on the part of key players. The only other title vacated was by another Philadelphia team: St. Joseph’s, in 1963. In seems that Philly only used Madison Square Garden to finance its own gambling rings. They didn’t need a Jack Molinas!
9 As Raftery must know, the “Raf on Roundball” trope mimics Red Auerbach’s old show “Red on Roundball.”
10 Villanova’s 6’11” Daniel Ochefu was in prevent mode, trying to deny Paige the ball and probably ready to foul him on the ground, but he slipped, going for the fool’s gold of a possible steal.
11 Kris Jenkins is the adopted brother of North Carolina’s Nate Britt.