I. WARM UP TIME
Last fall, just as I was getting back into the rhythm of fully expecting an NCAA tournament, Omicron threatened once again to disrupt seasonal secular life’s ongoing rituals, as COVID’s earlier iteration had done less than two years earlier. Yes, last year’s tourney had been held, but it had transpired in the wake of an on-going-ly jeopardized feeling, after the 2020 festivities had been dramatically cancelled, just as the virus was really getting going [1]. Last season had been all about Gonzaga, which had been widely expected to replicate the 1976 Indiana team’s perfect 32-0 season. They came within a game of so doing, but–surprisingly–were brutally manhandled by older, much stronger Baylor.
This year, with traditional superpowers Duke and North Carolina underperforming early on, there seemed to be no Gonzaga–unless it was Gonzaga, but fool me once, maybe, but not twice: I’d seen them in person against San Francisco while they were ranked first, and came away convinced that, despite their many talents, somebodies–maybe Duke–would prove too physically superior. And so it was in the round of sixteen against Arkansas’ athleticism (no code intended) and speed. Perhaps Gonzaga had been looking ahead to Duke.
As a transplanted New Yorker with incurably quirky team loyalties and viewing habits (often determined more by announcer preferences than team interests), my usual habits had been disrupted by the past two seasons: I had lost touch with how to stream Ivy League games, as they had taken last year off, so I started to think local. Located in my neighborhood, the University of San Francisco had an unusually talented, multinational, and multiracial team that secured an at large bid for the first time in decades. They brought me back to attending several games in person, but could not fully capture my fancy.
Still saddled with an eerie feeling of trying to reconnect and overcome the discontinuity of the past two years, I indulged myself, turning to the phenomenal range of televised offerings [2], both weekend and weekday, and tried to find my proper place in this new world of college basketball, in which players can freely switch teams without sitting out a year, and now can get a gratuitous extra year, because of COVID’s interruption of their collegiate careers.
All season, it felt like, I was watching nothing but St. John’s games, with an occasional peek at Kentucky to see their Congolese rebounding fool Oscar Tshiebwe, half for his rebound stats, half for his hallowed basketball first name. Watching St. John’s from 3000 miles away! At first, they were a curiosity; a nostalgic one. Their coach, Mike Anderson, was new to me, but had twenty years of head coaching experience– including successful runs at Arkansas and Missouri–without enduring a single losing season. Clearly a player’s coach, his manner during time-outs is exemplary. Anderson had taken over when Chris Mullin suddenly pulled the plug on trying to do for the Johnnies [3] what he did for them as a player in the 1980’s, just as his old nemesis/counterpart Patrick Ewing was trying to do with Georgetown [4].
These quintessentially New York Johnnies fascinated me with their up-tempo style, with myriad players stepping into starring roles at different times. I must have watched ten of their games, often taping a Saturday affair, and watching it mid-week, but they began to pile up. It felt intimate, like watching in the playgrounds, but, though often magical, Anderson’s charges had an unsteady season, because of frequent injuries to Posh Alexander, their powerful, thick-bodied point guard, who evoked memories of Pearl Washington at Syracuse. Their other star (also with a world class name) was Julian Champagnie, whose twin brother had turned pro after just one year at Pitt, while Julian stayed on for a second season under Anderson.
Alexander had missed a spate of games, resulting in an 8-11 conference record, so it would take capturing the Big East tournament championship–requiring a sweep of four consecutive games–to secure an NCAA bid- as six conference teams had better regular season records. Their opening round 92-73 trouncing of DePaul was cause for optimism, but vaunted and well-rested Villanova loomed as their second round opponent, less than twenty-four later.
Undaunted, and running Anderson’s up-tempo offense to near perfection, they sped to a 44-27 lead, with fifteen minutes remaining, but Posh picked up his third foul, and the Garden roof summarily fell in: a 15-2 Villanova spurt followed immediately. Once re-inserted, Alexander seemed to steady his team, but quickly picked up his fourth foul. The game see-sawed, with Posh actually daring to take charges while playing with four fouls.
Finally, Posh fouled out, and Villanova triumphed 66-65, but only as a result of a questionable call that gave them two free throws with 2.8 seconds left, a call that both I and the New York Post felt would not have been made against Villanova. The other difference was that Villanova made their free throws, while St. John’s–ever the schoolyard team–did not.
II LET ME NOT GO MAD: MADNESS AT LAST
So the start of the NCAA tournament was kind of a come-down for me. The sixty-eight team field would include six Big East entrants, but not St. John’s. After Round One, I took consolation in knowing that thirty-six other teams had suffered the same fate of exclusion/elimination, but I remained chagrined to see Villanova, lionized as usual, moving smoothly through the first two rounds.
Meanwhile, the lowly fifteenth-seeded St. Peter’s Peacocks (the basketball world’s Ukraine) were stealing the show, eliminating second seeded Kentucky in the first round, and then vaunted Purdue–with their great sophomore star Jaden Ivey and their 7’4” center–in the Sweet Sixteen; they finally faced North Carolina in a regional final that had been projected to match Kentucky against defending champion Baylor. It was like the Jeremy Lin phenomenon: you never knew when–or if–it would end. “How Pete It Is,” the New York Post headline intoned.
St. Peter’s was coached by the eminently likeable Shaheen Holloway, who, once the Peacocks were beaten, was immediately pirated away by his alma mater Seton Hall, at a tenfold increase in salary [5]. In a similar heist, SEC powerhouse Florida waited only a single day after his team was eliminated to lock up San Francisco’s youthful coach Todd Golden with a six-year $18 million package. Hey, even underdogs have to eat.
The familiar trope of “the best player on the court” is what announcers typically default to now, as a basis for making predictions. Originally the child of Charles Barkley; now the phrase is everywhere, as if a legitimate and reliable measure of team prowess. Similarly, with Cinderellas gone, we were left simply to wonder who was actually the best team in the country; it was hard to bet against Duke, in their much-lionized coach Mike Krzyzewski’s victory lap season, ending his forty-two year reign at Duke, as the winningest coach of all-time.
Intensely disliking Duke’s arrogant and patrician manner, as well as their sanctimonious coach, I had avoided their early round games, having checked them out in November, and seen enough of Paolo Banchero, their 6’10” 250 pound point guard, to expect that Duke might be unbeatable when it really counted. I have come to assume Duke will win, so why should I watch them more than is necessary to judge them harshly? I even managed to miss K’s Sweet Sixteen match-up with fellow icon Tom Izzo of Michigan State.
My efforts to come to terms with my loathing for Krzyzewski began when Duke won its first national championship in 1992 [6], when my father suggested to me that “Coach K” is essentially a reserved man, but my feelings had deep roots: playing for Bobby Knight at Army, K was the first player I had ever seen deliberately “take charges;” perchance to flop!
This novel tactic was a direct result of the rule change that made offensive fouls into non-shooting fouls, leading to a marked increase in officials’ freedom to call charges. Previously, there had been a powerful bias toward calling a block, partly because the time involved in everybody’s walking the length of the floor and re-setting on the opposite free throw line exposed referees not only to verbal abuse, but in some venues, to a variety of thrown groceries, both soft and hard, as well as (at least in Syracuse), appliances and other assorted hardware.
Since then I have tried to screen out the avalanche of testimonials K has received, but Barkley’s before the Duke-Carolina game broke through to me in a way similar to my father’s offhand remark thirty years earlier. Could I really begrudge K a title in his forty-second year coaching Duke? I had noticed that, in his recent interviews, he was focused more on his players’ individual talents, often seeming in awe of their talent, as the game evolved progressively further from his own playing days; the kind of thang my father would have caught before I did.
So, in this tournament of sixth year seniors and third year sophomores, (Miami’s Charlie Moore was playing on his fourth college team) could anyone beat Duke? Though St. Peter’s seemed to put skepticism to permanent rest, I couldn’t help remaining skeptical myself, perhaps still grieving for St. John’s, and distracted by having to travel cross-country to honor an obligation to attend an old friend’s eightieth birthday celebration.
After all the fussin’ and fightin’ of the early rounds, the Final Four turned out to involve four traditional powerhouses, though only one (Kansas) had been a number one seed in its region. North Carolina had been an eighth seed, but they are, after all, North Carolina, as Baylor found out the hard way Cinderella darling St. Peter’s eventually did too.
III INTERLUDE: PARITY REWARDED
While I was catching up, I decided to check out the women’s side. As with the men, their Final Four featured traditional powers, with UConn vaulting back into favorite-dom with the return from injury of Paige Bueckers, last season’s Player of the Year as a freshman. UConn’s Geno Auriemma and Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer have long been rival coaches, running the country’s two top programs, after Tennessee’s reign finally ended in 2008. The Stanford women are the Lady Dookies to me, but being there’s always a UConn, I figured I needn’t be entirely resigned to ultimate defeat. Of recent years, South Carolina has joined the elite club.
Not having paid much attention of recent years, I was taken with how much more athletic and daring the women’s game has become. How does one say that in admiration these days, without sounding like “You’ve come a long way?” Teams pressed aggressively, seeking to disrupt, if not transgress [7].
The UConn-Stanford semi-final was the game that got me watching, mostly to see Bueckers, who has an extraordinary ability to maintain her balance while changing direction, both vertically and horizontally, and has decision-making maturity and leadership mentality well beyond her years. But Stanford’s length, versatility, shooting and depth seemed likely to overwhelm, if they could get it all to click. (They had won their last twenty-four games.) At 26-25, they finally grabbed a lead, ending the half down only one (27-26), but the teams looked nowhere near equal. Stanford had scored twenty points “in the paint,” compared to merely six for UConn.
Could Bueckers’ unique skill package somehow get in the collective Stanford head, like Princeton’s Bill Bradley had done in 1964 against an overwhelmingly superior Michigan team, until he fouled out with his team holding a twelve point lead they could not maintain for the final five minutes without him [8]?
With UConn leading 49-41 in the fourth quarter, Bueckers left the game limping after a collision, leaving me to wonder if this might become replay of Bradley’s departure in the title game but, after a brief Stanford rally, Bueckers returned, and UConn prevailed 62-58. Could this happen against powerful South Carolina?
Basketball uniquely blends balletic grace with physicality; as the game advances, the balance shifts toward physicality, because the balleticism comes first. That’s why people choose b-ball as their sport (or get chosen by it). Then the party ends, and the hard work starts. Bueckers illustrated this in the final game against South Carolina, where she settled for being a distributor in the disastrous first quarter, only showing her aggression in the second, bringing UConn back into the game, but, as it turned out, too late.
South Carolina’s 64-49 drubbing reflected their complete domination. These were Gamecocks, not just Peacocks! Their beefy [9] but agile 6’5, star Aliyah Boston, who had missed a point blank put-back that would have reversed the outcome of last year’s championship game, had succeeded Bueckers as Player of the Year. Afterwards, she danced joyously with her South Carolina predecessor and current WNBA star A’ja Wilson. South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley told us all that it was “divinely ordered,” as her (fittingly named) senior point guard Destanni Henderson had a career high 26 points, while hounding Bueckers into an off night.
IV FINALLY: THE FINAL FOUR
Facing Villanova, Kansas scored the game’s first ten points, and stretched its lead to 38-19 before Villanova made a significant run, cutting the margin to eleven (40-29) at the half, but Kansas’s 6’10 250 pound David McCormack was just too big, collecting 25 points on 10-12 shooting, and dominating inside, while 6’5′ Ochai Agbaji shot 6-7 on threes for 21 points. Somehow, Villanova cut the lead to 64-58. Could they somehow catch Kansas, as they did St. John’s? Outmanned, Villanova was not getting the help from the refs that they enjoyed against St. John’s, and bowed out at 81-65.
This Kansas team looked like it could beat Duke [10]. Charles Barkley thought so too [11]. Duke would be facing its arch rival, which had spoiled K’s last game at Cameron [12] with an 84-71 trouncing. Amazingly, as these Southern bastions [13] had met many, many times, this would be their first encounter in an NCAA tournament game. After Kansas-Villanova, their first half seemed boring, with Duke taking a 37-34 lead, but the pace soon quickened. With the score tied at 65-65, and 5:18 left, Carolina’s great rebounder Armando Bacot (who had 99 in the six tourney games, getting a double-double in each of six games) twisted an ankle, but returned a minute later.
The camera focused on K’s wife, as Carolina took back the lead 75-74. Bacot fouled out–with 21 rebounds, having had 22 in his previous outing! Carolina star Caleb Love (28 points, 22 in the second half) hit a spectacular three for a 78-76 lead, and made three of four free throws (whereas Duke’s big man Mark Williams missed two) closing out Duke 81-77, and ending K’s storied career. Former North Carolina Coach Roy Williams looked on approvingly at the triumph of first year coach Hubert Davis! This game had eighteen lead changes!
After that neighborly war, and K’s exit, the Final might be anticlimactic, one feared, but it was anything but; rather, it was a fitting reprise of the 1957 triple overtime Final between the same two teams, probably as great a Final game as ever there was, complete with dramatic lead changes in both directions. It culminated with the greatest comeback (eighteen points) ever in Finals history, and a heroic performance by Carolina’s Armando Bacot. Astonishingly, each team had held the lead for the exact same amount of time (18 minutes and 42 seconds) over the forty minutes. It would almost have been the right thing to declare this one a draw!
Victorious Kansas got help for McCormack and Agbaji (named the tourney’s Most Outstanding Player) from transfer Remy Martin, playing in his fifth year, and 6’7” guard Christian Braun, who stepped out of the shadows, and showed himself to have a bit of Klay Thompson in him.
Bacot looked gimpy in warm-ups, but played heroically, collecting fifteen points and fifteen rebounds, with frequent bursts of domination. In the game’s crucial last minute, however, he came up lame, in as poignant a moment as I have ever seen in a basketball game [14].
Its poignancy was of course against a larger backdrop that we would prefer to ignore, and just join in singing “One Shining Moment.” Both finalists represented programs with histories of exploitation, abuse, and dishonesty, though North Carolina’s first year Head Coach Hubert Davis’s inspiringly genuine manner felt damn near redemptive.
As one friend put it: That game was a tribute to all that is good and wholesome in amateur athletics, the defining all-too-brief moment each year when we come together (from the left and right) to celebrate the pure joy of sport. Let’s all sing “One Shining Moment” together, and try not to remember that Bill Self and the Kansas program has ducked enforcement from the hypocritical NCAA because the school is “too important” to let rules or honesty get in the way. But did the bad guys win last night? Nah. Remember North Carolina a few years ago, also escaping NCAA sanctions, even after 20 kids in their program were caught having exams taken for them. Both schools are complicit, and the NCAA is a fraud. But that was a helluva game last night!
NOTES
1 It was at halftime of a Big East tournament game that the lights went out.
2 Television coverage had expanded to the point where you could keep up with pretty much as many major conferences as you liked. For me, that meant following The Big East, but also listening to radio broadcasts that the NCAA sanctions during the tournament.
These broadcasts are quite compelling: the announcers are generally former coaches, often with New York accents and a keen sense of how to use the game’s idioms to create excitement and a sense of actually being there. It feels like they are speaking to real fans; people who know the game so intimately that they can visualize a well-presented game on the radio. Their commercials appeal to a whole other order of fandom: no Lilly and the Apple Technocratic Industrial Complex, or that crap that infiltrates my brain from watching too many games. Instead, they peddle O’Reilly Auto Parts, and Dell computers. Instead of “Liberty, Liberty, Liberty….Liberty,” I hear “O O O’Reilly” for O’Reilly Auto Parts.
I love taking long drives during games!
3 Apologies to those who wish reparation for the old nickname of “The Red Men.” I just can’t bring myself to accept “Red Storm.”
4 Ewing won last year’s conference tournament with a team that finished last in the regular season. This season he again finished last, won zero conference games, but bowed out quietly in the tournament’s first round.
5 Holloway was so beloved by his players that they attended the press conference announcing his departure en masse, having been invited there by Seton Hall! The next day, three of Holloway’s best players at St. Peter’s entered the “transfer portal.”
6 Liss, R. “Ten Years of Duke.” WELCOMAT
7 Notably, there are more women announcers this year; even for men’s games. Among the manifestations of pride in the women’s game’s gathering maturity was Rebecca Lobo’s sleek black sleeveless dress, with an entirely bare right shoulder.
8 This game was decided in regulation time by Cazzie Russell’s short last second jump shot, which gave Russell an undeserved reputation as a great clutch shooter. Upon reflection: his shot was of little actual significance, because had there been an overtime, a minute’s thought would lead anyone to conclude that the last five minutes had clearly established that Princeton minus Bradley would have had no chance against Michigan.
9 Perhaps true parity–other than not having to choose one’s pronouns carefully–would be achieved when women’s basketball becomes comfortable listing players’ weights as well as heights, as both are important measures of size.
10 After all, comparative scores made them fifteen points better than St. John’s!
11 Be thankful for Charles: otherwise, the announcer’s booth is generally crawling with Dookies: Grant Hill, Jim Spanarkel, Jay Bilas.
12 What kind of arrogance dictates the name Cameron Indoor Stadium”? It’s as if Duke thinks everyone else only gets to play outside.
13 Bastions that transitioned seamlessly from not admitting Blacks to starting four or five.
14 The re-injury was the result of a floor board’s coming unglued, highlighting the make-shift nature of the court in the Super Dome, which is more properly a football stadium. In an astonishing display of sportsmanship, the Kansas team eschewed their opportunity to fast break against what was momentarily a four man Carolina team, instead waiting for Bacot to get down the court, so that the officials mercifully would stop the game and allow a substitution.