“O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear
1. Gettin’ Ready
With the NCAA tournament only a week away, and the all-consuming madness of March looming large, I focused instead upon the preceding week. My favorite time of the college season is the week of the conference tournaments, featuring neighborly battles between familiar rivals, well known to one another. It feels more genuine than the hyped-up battles that capture the attention- and the hearts- of the countless bracket addicts who spring into action as of the Sunday Selection Committee meeting.
It’s the Big East Tournament that excites me the most, with all those urban teams that used to be “independents,” before ESPN changed the game in the 1980’s, and The Big East was born. Three teams in particular: Providence, St. John’s, and Marquette, all darlings of the old Madison Square Garden and the NIT, when it really meant something. That was up until 1971, the year after Marquette Coach Al McGuire declined an NCAA bid in favor of playing in the NIT (1), prompting the NCAA to make it mandatory to accept its invitations, but only after Al’s Warriors defeated Louie Carnesecca’s Redmen in the 1970 NIT Final.
McGuire’s 1967 Marquette squad was the foil for the introduction of Walt Frazier to New York. In the last college game played in the old Garden, Frazier’s Southern Illinois Salukis, in their first year as a Division I team (the previous year, Frazier had been academically ineligible) defeated Marquette 71-56 in the NIT Final, forever linking McGuire and Frazier as quintessentially iconic New York treasures. Frazier (not yet “Clyde”) was named the NIT’s MVP. Could it have been otherwise?
The Warriors versus the Redmen? Yes, those really were the nicknames. I’m retrograde enough to miss them sorely: it’s taken me decades of simmering to be comfortable settling for calling St. John’s “the Johnnies,” instead of the farcical and insipidly colorless Red Storm that was enlisted to cancel “Redmen” in 1994, the same year that Marquette’s Warriors became the “Golden Eagles.” These new monikers were intended to right old injustices, but struck a blow against tradition, freedom, anarchism, and urban pride (2). May nostalgia and outrage live!
So the game I’d most been waiting for opened the Big East tournament quarterfinals, pitting eighth-seeded St. John’s against fellow 1970 NIT finalist Marquette, the Big East regular season champion and top tournament seed.
It did not disappoint. Both coaches were exemplary in their genuine and humane ways of talking to their players. Big East Coach of the Year Shaka Smart was in his second year at come to Marquette after a six-year stint at Texas, which had snapped him up after his phenomenal success at VCU (from play-in game to Final Four!) brought him to national attention, and made him too hot a commodity to resist an offer from a “higher power.” (During Final Four Weekend, Smart was later named national Coach of the year).
St. John’s Coach Mike Anderson, a protégé of Nolan Richardson at Arkansas, had an unbroken record of twenty winning seasons as a Head Coach. He came to St. John’s from Missouri after the sudden resignation of Chris Mullin, dashing hopes that former Big East luminaries Mullin and Patrick Ewing would rekindle their rivalry as coaches. Mullin was long gone, and, just as the Big East tourney began, Georgetown fired Ewing after consecutive abysmal seasons.
The game had several extended droughts: Marquette went ahead 6-0, then 16-11, before seven scoreless minutes drought left them down 27-16, then 34-20. It was 36-26 at halftime, but five scoreless St. John’s minutes opened the second half, allowing Marquette to re-take the lead at 40-38. A nine point run in just minute and a half ― capped by a Posh Alexander three ―put the Johnnies up 47-40, but a fully five minute drought left them once again behind. St. John’s was not used to low scoring games, as they are known to push pace. They play faster than any other Division I team.
With the Johnnies still going full-out playground against the disciplined Golden Eagles, the lead see-sawed until regulation time ended at 61-61. St. John’s, emphasizing pace and flow, seemed to have lost its ability to shoot; whereas Marquette, led by Big East Player of the Year Tyler Kolec, a muscular left-handed guard evoking both Gail Goodrich and Goran Dragic (Jalen Brunson too?), played deliberate ball, thriving on open threes created off by the Kolec’s relentless and clever penetration. He scored all of his nineteen points in the second half (twelve) and overtime (seven more).
Fittingly, Johnnie leader Posh Alexander had a final shot at winning the game outright, but his three-pointer at the buzzer failed to drop, giving Marquette a 72-70 overtime win, which they did not actually need to make the NCAA tournament (3); whereas St. John’s did (4)! Marquette’s exact seed would be determined when the bracketology pundits and powers met on Sunday to drive the “American people” (as Biden and others call us) into a temporary Lear-like mental state, to our own private heaths and casinos.
What a game! Overtime! Just sixty-one regulation points for Marquette, which had scored ninety-six both times on St. John’s during the Big East regular season. How exhausted would St. John’s, which had played the day before, have been the next day, had they survived Marquette? Plus, their big man Joel Soriano had been hurt in the game’s final seconds. But their season was over, as they would not allow themselves to entertain an NIT bid.
Now this was real basketball, I thought! But was I sleeping with the enemy in enjoying the Fox Sports broadcasters (Tim Brando, Jim Jackson, with Billy Rafferty in the wings)? I’m actually quite fond of Fox Sports for bringing me Big East games, all the way to California, where we have a wonderful natural resource of our own in Bill Walton’s antic ― but brilliant ― commentaries. There’s only one Hubie Brown and one Bill Walton, but those Fox guys are really good; in Rafferty’s case, more than good.
Just a day later, I was shocked to learn that Anderson ― with four years and $10,000,000 remaining on an eight year contract―had been fired! Four winning records did not compensate, apparently, for zero NCAA appearances. I thought about how Anderson’s last game had hinged on that last missed shot, but even if Posh had hit that one, it would have taken two more victories to have had a chance at saving his coach’s job.
Could a different coach do any better in the loaded and tradition-laden Big East? Well, try Rick Pitino, who once coached the Knicks, turning a losing team into a championship contender in just two years, right after revolutionizing college basketball’s deployment of the three-pointer during his two year stint at Providence. There, he inherited a losing team and took them to the Final. Then came his two successful years with the Knicks, after which he decided he was really a college coach, and took the Kentucky job.
In his eight years rehabilitating the scandal-tarred Kentucky “franchise,” the eternally youthful (though now seventy) Pitino produced both a national title and a runner-up. He later won another title at in-state rival Louisville, before leaving in disgrace (5). His career has been a Shakespearean odyssey of tragedy, triumph, and hubris. Two NCAA titles and six Final Fours! His record as a coach is luminescent, but the sheriff never lags too behind. Screw the shady stuff. New York deserves to have him back (6)! He’s a true genius coach, having “cut his teeth under Hubie Brown’s wing.” God help me. Let me not die of bad cliches!
So, my Johnnies were gone, but the Garden festivities were hardly over, and Marquette, though I knew them less well, held almost as much Garden history for me as St. John’s. Turns out: my high school friend Peter Rutkoff had been Shaka Smart’s mentor at Kenyon. When he called, it was an unexpected treat to find there was actually someone I knew who was also involved in this game. Watching Smart’s post-game interviews, I was hooked immediately.
With the Johnnies gone, and the Providence Friars also fallen, I was primed to become Marquette fan again. To have a shot at winning the Big Dance, though, it seemed they needed a big man. (Maybe Soriano? Couldn’t that ever-evolving transfer portal widen a bit more?) OK, then Olivier-Maxence Prosper, their marvelously athletic 6’8” 230-pound Canadian import, by way of an NBA-run high school in Mexico, would have to suffice, along with 6’9” 215-pound junior Oso Ichodaro.
The Marquette-UConn Big East Semi-Final was another great game: a 70-68 win for Marquette, after a 38-38 first half. Just like against St. John’s (72-70), an opponent’s errant three pointer at the buzzer made the difference between advancement and elimination. My fandom was growing: Shaka Smart’s interviews showed his charm, charisma, and intelligence; even an Al McGuire-like playfulness.
The Big East Final proved anti-climactic: Marquette’s speed and defensive intensity easily overwhelmed Xavier (whose presence in the Big East evokes the New Yorker cartoon depicting Gothamites’ horizons as extending little beyond Ninth Avenue). The game was never close, finishing at 65-51. The trophy remained in Smart’s hands for hardly a second, as he ― acting as if he was a mere conduit ― shuttled it along to his players, standing behind him. Kolec had twenty, totaling fifty-six for three games, adding the tournament MVP to his laurels.
2. May I Have This Dance?
By the time the NCAA brackets were announced and the play-in games begun, my curmudgeonly stance was already slipping. I tuned in on the last of the four play-in games, and felt my hardness melt at the dulcet tones of Avery Johnson’s familiar voice, presiding over Arizona State’s rout of Nevada. But soon enough, I glanced at rival ESPN’s Philadelphia-Cleveland game: it took only a quick glimpse of Joel Embiid and Donovan Mitchell to keep me from dialing back to that play-in game. Plus, I’d already seen Arizona State in games animated by Bill Walton’s zany brilliance, and, clearly, it was over early, AND neither of these teams was going anywhere.
Marquette was to be my focus, and I would strive for a narrow lens (7),
but after an easy win over Vermont (8), they ran into Michigan State, and went down 14-3 early, then 18-5, with Kolec on the bench with two early fouls. After his return, with “stretch four” Prosper excelling at both ends, they climbed back to lead 36-33; then 39-36 on a Kolec three, but it was an ugly game, favoring Tom Izzo’s Spartans. With Prosper cooling off, and the game lacking tempo and flow, Michigan State went up. Marquette got back to within one at 56-55, but missed opportunities and a questionable block that might have been a goal tend combined with six Kolec turnovers to seal matters. MSU won going away: 66-55.
Shaka was becoming a celebrity for his post-game milkshakes and ecstatic leaps on the sidelines, duly beloved by Sir Charles, (and everyone else), but his team’s loss deprived him and his charges of a triumphant return to the Garden, where they had just claimed the Big East title. As irony (along with parity and serendipity) would have it, three other Big East teams advanced to the Sweet Sixteen: UConn, Creighton, and Xavier.
Having vowed (to myself) to maintain a minimalist stance, I had missed not only Princeton’s takedown of number two seed Arizona, but top-seeded Purdue’s loss to yet another New Jersey upstart. Like lazy groundhogs, they seem to surface in March. Channeling St. Peter’s (which eliminated Purdue in last season’s Sweet Sixteen), Farleigh-Dickinson, the smallest of all 353 NCAA Division I teams, took out the Boilermakers (with 7’4” Zach Edey) in only the second instance ever of a number one seed losing its first-round game!
For me, not much beckoned, after the Marquette-Michigan State disapppointment. I wasn’t about to let myself become a Princeton fan, no matter how happy I was that they’d beaten Arizona, and villainous Duke was gone before I felt compelled to watch them. Their rookie Head Coach Jon Scheyer’s shark-like wide-mouthed smile enabled me to transfer — seamlessly — all my bad feelings about Coach K. Tennessee took care of them handily.
3. Interest Rekindled: Markquis Nowell
Following the red thread from St. John’s to Marquette to Michigan State brought this weary pilgrim to Kansas State, the eventual conqueror of Tom Izzo’s Spartans, in a game for the ages. Fittingly, it took place in the Garden, which was now hosting The Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight. After serving as one of sixteen sites for the first two rounds, the Garden was hosting the nation-wide unveiling of Harlem’s own 5’8” Markquis Nowell, a blocky self-confident 23-year-old dynamo who was coming home to grace the Garden and avenge Marquette’s loss. He brought with him two old Harlem friends: 6’8” Ismael Massoud and 6’10” Nae’Qwan Tomlin, a wildly athletic junior college transfer from Harlem’s Rucker Park, who started high school at 5’9,” and eschewed high school ball in favor of playing year-round at Rucker.
In Round Two, Nowell’s twenty-three second half points (27 points and nine assists in 40 minutes, after 14 assists in Round One) led Kansas State to a 75-69 win over Kentucky, despite a twenty-five point/eighteen rebound game from Oscar Tshiebwe, last season’s NCAA Player of the Year, who rebounds like Charles Barkley, but is not nearly as skilled. “Crazy faith,” According to K State Coach Jerome Tang in explaining how his charges exacted revenge for the 1951 NCAA Final in which Kentucky had beaten Kansas State, a once prosperous franchise that had kept Wilt Chamberlain’s Kansas team out of the NCAA in Wilt’s second of only two years as a varsity player.
At 50-46, with just five second half minutes gone, Nowell went down with an ankle injury, having already endured two team-mates blowing chippies he’d handed them. Michigan State then went crazy, making an 11-2 run, before Nowell returned with a brilliantly improvised buzzer-beating three, and then resumed picking apart MSU’s defense, but, on the other end, Michigan State was powerfully in gear.
I wasn’t sure, from Nowell’s disproportionate (though great) decisions to drive and pass whether his ankle could handle pulling up for a long three, while I thought that might be just the dagger K State needed. If he felt instinctively that he had only one left in him, I guessed, it was smart (though unnerving to me) for him to wait.
The game was reminding me — as no other ever has — of Walt Frazier’s 36 point/19 assist seventh game of the Knicks’ 1970 championship Final, the game in which Willis Reed, Clyde’s hobbled co-star, made his fabled late entrance. With nineteen assists and five steals, it was as if Nowell had channeled both Frazier and Reed together — in their finest hour in the Garden — just two days after the New York sports world was saddened by the news of Reed’s death.
As it turned out, Nowell’s first non-lay-up shot was a mid-range jumper with a minute left to make for an 82-78 lead; but there followed a heart-breaking miss of a lay-up; then a missed long three; then an agonizing miss on a great drive, the last play in regulation time! 82-82.
Overtime! Finally, a 98-93 win in what Kevin Durant aptly called a “legendary display of controlling a basketball game.” Twenty points and an NCAA tournament record nineteen assists! “Mister New York City himself,” intoned the genial Kenny Smith, among the finest of New York City “point gods.” “The King of New York,” said the Post, where Nowell adorned the front page, as he did The Daily News.
As the tourney and all its sub-plots proceeded, it was becoming clear that the transfer portal (9) changes everything. Michigan State had eschewed it, whereas Kansas State had done a full restocking. Nowell and Massoud, both from the Harlem pipeline, were the only two returning Kansas State players from last season. None had begun his (OK, “their”) college career in Kansas State! A KSU transfer Nijel Pack, was one of three key transfers at eventual Final Four team Miami.
Fast, strong, tricky, New York crafty, always under control, Nowell thinks several moves ahead, and often throws passes to open areas he expects his team-mates to get to, not just to where they are. He sees holes like a running back. Against Florida Atlantic in the Elite Eight, he had fifteen points and seven assists at half-time, after averaging 20/14 over three games. Battling a relentless Florida Atlantic team, he had ten points in three minutes to erase a seven point lead, tying the game at 34-34. It seemed he could do anything!
Having received so much from Nowell, the Garden then gave him something back, as his overshot three-pointer banked its way in for a 63-57 lead, but then, what had seemed like an endless river of kindness suddenly ran dry: a 72-64 lead evaporated quickly, in the face of thunderous dunks by Florida Atlantic’s 7’1” growling and grimacing Russian center Vladislav Goldin.
K-State led 74-71 on Nowell’s two free throws. “Please, basketball gods, you can’t take this kid away,” I begged, but soon, he missed a lay-up he could have made. Inexplicably, after several possessions in which only he touched the ball, Nowell passed up a three-pointer at the end. Having logged forty-three minutes the previous game, he had shot just 8-21 in this heartbreaking 79-76 loss. If he proves too short for the NBA, I’d pay to see him play one on one with Mac McClung (10)!
4. What Now? Caitlyn Clark To The Rescue
Nowell was suddenly gone, following Marquette; and St. John’s before them. I’d gone the whole game fixated on Nowell and his team-mates, hardly differentiating the Florida Atlantic’s players. Could my affection be transferred yet again?
The highest seeds were gone, with Houston and Alabama going down before the Elite Eight. Alabama’s 71-64’s loss to San Diego State only meant ― to me ― that Bama’s just a football school. And Houston’s exit after losing to Miami re-evoked the disappointment of the Olajuwon-Drexler Phi Slama Jama squad that is remembered best as a foil for Jimmy Valvano’s North Carolina State miracle makers. Calling all Lorenzo Charles clones!
Lots of people love upsets, whereas I prefer seeing just how good ― or great― the supposed best teams really are. With the top seeds quickly eliminated, we were left to watch many teams of no particular interest, teams we’d never think to catch during the regular season, such as Florida Atlantic.
That was just the beginning of the Elite Eight, and I was already done in. So I drove twenty miles to a pool and hot tub, and thus had the chance to listen to the radio broadcast, featuring the always contentious P.J. Carlesimo (exuding New York heat with every word), instead of TNT’s relentlessly bombastic Kevin Harlan. ESPN’s tournament radio broadcasts are culturally illuminating: judging from the commercials, they target a whole other demographic always in search of a bargain at O’ Reilly Auto Parts (“O,O, O’ Reilly”) or in need of a tax lawyer. There is no counterpart to TNT’s noxiously omnipresent Lilly of AT&T.
The game I missed viewing ― but listened to parts of ― was UConn’s 82-54 rout of Gonzaga. Afterwards, Coach Dan Hurley pointed out that his UConn team was crushing people again, as they did early in the season, attributing their resurgence to the fact that they were no longer playing Big East teams! They reached The Final Four with four consecutive routs, with victory margins ranging from 15 to 28, whereas they were 13-7 in the Big East regular season, tying them for fourth place with Providence. With Creighton alive in the Elite Eight, after beating Princeton, an all Big East Final appeared possible.
For its part, Creighton sped to an eight point lead, but, at 22-16, I decided that they took too many outside shots, and that SDS’s defense-minded Aztecs would prevail. Shooting 14-26 from the floor, Creighton led 33-28 a halftime, but, predictably, the game devolved into a kind of boxing match: to score, it was necessary to absorb body blows. Sixty points might win it. Every missed basket had the smell of imminent overtime, which nearly materialized, because of an errant SDS inbounds pass, while trying to protect a two point lead.
The game was decided on a highly controversial referee’s call on what would have been the game’s final shot in regulation time. Getting the call, 5’10” Darrion Trammell made the second of two free throws for a 57-56 SDS win. It was, indeed, an unbelievable ending, the kind that makes NCAA games so widely irresistible, (though not for me, generally, as I prefer to get the little guys off the stage early). Raw athleticism promised to be the order of the day when SDS played Florida Atlantic. Only UConn remained from the Big East.
I took the late afternoon off, and recorded Texas-Miami, not having seen either team before, but feeling a sentimental attachment to Miami Coach Jim Larranaga, because he played at Providence when I was still an avid fan. He’d taken unknown George Mason to the Final Four in 2006 (11). In a stunning comeback, Miami made up a thirteen point deficit, with 6’7” lefty Jordan Miller getting twenty-seven points (7/7, 13/13), without missing a shot. Miami shot 59%, and won the second half 51-36, for an 88-81 win. So a Big East bred coach would face UConn. Could he stop the Huskies’ rampaging march?
This strange Final Four, with no seed high than fourth (UConn) was eclipsed in anticipation by Iowa star Caitlyn Clark’s much-ballyhooed confrontation with undefeated defending national titlist South Carolina the night before. The prospect of the country’s best player- a white woman- facing off against the nation’s number one team (the predominantly Black defending national champions on a forty-two game winning streak) recalled the historic 1964 Holiday Festival semi-final game between the country’s top-ranked team, Michigan, and Bill Bradley’s upstart Princeton squad (12).
Bradley wore “42.” Was this a sign? I was skeptical, imagining that South Carolina’s physicality could not be matched or countered. Wrong! Pressured but unperturbed, Clark masterminded a 22-13 first quarter. She had nineteen at half-time, hitting 3 of 7 threes (looong threes!), giving Iowa a 38-37 lead, which swelled to 46-37.
In this Princeton-Michigan re-enactment, last year’s Player of the Year Aliyah Boston figured to be Michigan’s Cazzie Russell to Clark’s Bill Bradley, but she was in early foul trouble, enduring a scoreless first half.
With its great depth, South Carolina ― it seemed ― could handle foul trouble’s limiting Boston’s minutes, especially since Iowa’s powerful and highly skilled center Monica Czinano (a real co-star, who averaged nineteen points and shot 67.6% over her last three years) was also plagued by early fouls. Czinano had the third quarter’s last six points, and Clark made it 67-62 on a Stef Curry length three. Though only 5-17 on threes, Clark scored her team’s last fifteen points for a 77-73 win, in which she scored forty-one for the second consecutive game! (The previous one was a 41-10-12 triple double). She played thirty-nine minutes.
In the last quarter, South Carolina’s offense sputtered, for no discernible reason, except perhaps that they were demoralized by knowing they could not stop Clark on the other end. If so, this uncannily replicated what happened in that Princeton-Michigan game: early in the second half, the teams were matching baskets, with Michigan having little trouble scoring, when their offense ground to a sudden halt, as if demoralized by the seeming inevitability of Bradley’s countering their every move. His offense was paralyzing theirs! It seemed that Clark was similarly affecting South Carolina.
Post-game interviews showed Clark to be verbally adept and self- assured, cannily working in thanks to her entire family constellation, and gracefully signing autographs with enthusiasm, while maintaining her momentum toward the locker room. Bill Bradley redux, with a happy ending! The Men’s Final Four could not top this. Might she, though, in her Final game versus LSU?
5. Was Anything Left?
Opening for mighty UConn, the Florida Atlantic-San Diego State semi-final was an outstanding basketball game, but, despite the usual complement of story lines, and the relaxing company of Billy Raftery and Grant Hill, it never quite felt important (13). Once again, San Diego State’s clawing defense and physicality wore down its opponents, fueling a second half comeback that erased a fourteen-point second half deficit, and triumphed 72-71 on a beautifully set up and launched last-ditch jumper by Lamont Butler.
Facing the UConn juggernaut, Miami’s Hurricanes appeared to have swag, in addition to a brilliant coach in Jim Larranaga (14). For UConn, the awesomely powerful 6’8” Adama Sanogo’s two early threes nearly sealed matters before breakfast was even served (which was fitting, as Sanogo was honoring Ramadan by fasting).
Deep, skilled, and multi-talented, UConn flexed its muscles and shot its threes for a 9-0 start. Miami struggled back to tie it 19-19, but soon Miami was hoisting up questionable threes, and it was 27-19. Star guard Jordan Hawkins was under the weather, but it hardly mattered. Hitting wide open threes, UConn opened up a thirteen point margin, the same lead that Miami had overcome against Texas, but the score soon swelled to 49-29. Miami twice got back within ten, but no closer. The 72-59 final score made this the closest anyone had come to UConn! Sanogo had twenty-one, making UConn 19-0 in games in which he gets at least twenty. It was UConn’s eleventh straight NCAA win, tying Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley’s Duke teams that captured consecutive crowns.
After her awesome semi-final, Clark was being wildly lauded as the best and most skilled player in the country, men included! “Most Outstanding,” sure. Wonderful! Magical! But: I love her as much as anyone, but such comparisons are inapt, as they ignore the size difference between men’s and women’s basketballs, and thus fall of their own weight. I’m 5’9,” but when I once fooled around with a women’s ball, I found myself instinctively aping the moves of 6’7” swooping, gliding forwards, as if liberated the chains of my limited size. Big difference! Whole other game and dimension. You can’t compare apples and cantaloupes. She’s other-worldly good. Enough.
No matter. Coming off consecutive forty-one point games to reach the Final (14), Clark was hounded by athletic LSU defenders as she brought the ball up court. Still, she still nailed four threes ― in the first seven minutes―before she was cooled off by defensive pressure, and forced into tougher shots. LSU led 27-22 at the quarter. Clark’s team-mates responded with two threes, went up 30-29, but soon trailed 39-32, with Clark looking tired. LSU’s explosive burst made it 49-36.
At 49-38, Clark was called for her second offensive foul ― within three minutes ― for pushing-off to get some space; both calls were questionable, especially the second, as it was her third overall, sending her to the bench. LSU’s graduate transfer guard Jasmine Carson (scoreless in her last three games) capped off a twenty-one-point half with a three that was unintentionally banked, making it 59-42 on 9-12 threes, and seemingly sealing matters. Clark had three fouls, along with her sixteen points.
LSU’s lead reached 63-42, but threes from four different Iowa players (Czinano’s being the old way), with a second one from Clark, cut LSU’s lead to 65-57. Czinano was dominating inside. Iowa cut the lead to 69-62, but the final crusher came when, on a single possession, Czinano and Clark were both saddled with a fourth foul, as Clark was hit with a technical for protesting the call against Czinano! With the score 75-64 after three quarters, someone needed to call Bill Bradley. At 85-71, Czinano fouled out, and it was over, finishing at 102-85, a record breaking total for LSU. Great performance for LSU, but it was a shame to see the referees play such a decisive role in a championship game.
Clark had her usual thirty points, and set a tournament record with 191 over six games. By dint of an archaic rule prohibiting women from turning pro until their college class graduates (the way it was for NBA players before Spencer Haywood’s lawsuit), she will return for her senior year. So will LSU Coach Kim Mulkey (her unkind words about Brittney Griner’s sexuality notwithstanding), and she may be a Pitino-like force in college basketball’s new bardo, the transfer portal.
6. Finally
“If music be the food of love, play on.”
―William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night.
The consensus was that UConn was definitely the better team, but San Diego State had overcome so much adversity and so many challenges that to have seen them time and again was to fall in love with them; perchance to dream. It was time to relax and enjoy.
Shooting beautifully from outside, SDS went up 10-8, but soon fell behind 20-12. SDS went eleven straight scoreless minutes from the floor. UConn was just too good. It’s an unfair game if only one team gets Sanogo. Soon it was 33-17. What kind of talent does this UConn team have? Well, a highly skilled 7’2” guy (freshman Donovan Clingan) can’t get twenty minutes a night! Leading 36-24, Hurley, quite credibly, said they should have been up twenty.
Valiantly, somehow, SDS got the lead down to five (60-55), but UConn’s superiority reasserted itself with a 16-4 run. They won going away: 76-59. Hurley was authoritative and commanding in his presence, saying that his team had improved all year. Commemorating UConn’s fifth national title, Hurley’s derangedly manic riff said it all.
It had been a long slog. Maybe I had it right the first time, and could’ve sat this one out. Big East Uber Alles! In solidarity with Mike Anderson, I say: “May Pitino’s success not be your defeat.”
UConn and Marquette have set a high bar. If only Pitino could get Nowell for St. John’s! Can’t wait for next Year’s Big East!
NOTES
- McGuire’s rationale was simple: he preferred ten days in New York City to the barnstorming tour required by a bid to the NCAA, but another (unstated) motivation was to protect his 6’11” center Jim Chones’ draft position by shielding him from the risking the value-endangering burden of having to play against Bill Walton.
- See George Packer’s “The Moral Case Against Euphemism” in The Atlantic (That’s George, not Billy, Packer).
- Having gone 17-3 in the Big East regular season, and, 26-6 overall, Marquette’s tournament seed (a two or a three) would be only minimally affected by their Big East tournament games.
- John’s knew that its season would end if they failed not only to beat Marquette, but to run the table with four victories in as many days, as their 18-15 record, and eighth place finish (the top five received NCAA bids) in the Big East, would not merit an at-large bid. It was not to be. Last year, St. John’s’ exit was equally anguishing, having been decided by a referee’s dubious call in the final seconds, giving Villanova two free throws to win- by a single point ― a game that the ghetto-evoking Johnnies had led all the way, a foul that would likely not have been called against the fairer-skinned Nova Wildcats.
- The recruiting scandal at Louisville led to an expunging of fully three years of games from Pitino’s and Louisville’s respective records: this added up to 123 wins and 3 losses.
- John’s announced its hiring of Pitino the day after Marquette’s loss to Michigan State.
- Had If I sat out the Big Dance, might I have been able to get Mike Anderson, Jimmy Boeheim, and North Carolina’s Hubert Davis (whose defending champions ― shockingly ―failed to make the tournament) to join my boycott? Or better yet, to watch along with me! May the Golden Eagles fly.
- Marquette’s first-round victory over Vermont was Shaka’s first NCAA win at Marquette. Second-seeded Texas (where Shaka won not a single NCAA game in six years, after his phenomenal run at VCU twelve years earlier) wound up being the highest seed left in the Elite Eight, finally succumbing to Miami’s furious comeback.
- With the new sanitized concept of “transfer portal,” (created in the wake of COVID’s interruption of continuous play), both generous legalized payments and thinly disguised bribes are now the norm, and rebuilding no longer need take years. Pitino works fast! Who might he coax to join him at St. John’s next year? During the tourney, he opined that there was no reason he couldn’t “win right away.” It’s too bad that Nowell is so happy at Kansas State. What a match, adding in the Garden a perfect trifecta!
- McClung, a 6’ white kid, as a marginal (“two way”) NBA player, stunned everyone at All-Star Weekend by winning the Dunk Contest in the highest imaginable style. Like Babe Ruth, he called it in advance.
- I need to forgive him for so coming to resemble Jimmy
- Bradley scored forty-one points and played a commanding role in every phase of the game, but fouled out with 4 minutes 37 seconds to play and Princeton ahead 76-63. With 3:33 to go, the Tiger lead stood at 77-63. Then Michigan, the top ranked team in the nation, and the prohibitive favorite in this game, exploded, completely overwhelming Princeton, which could not even get the ball up-court without Bradley. In just 65 seconds, Michigan wiped out a 78‐68 deficit, and tied the score. With 36 seconds left, they gained possession, held the ball for a final shot, by Russell, who made it, and thereby acquired a reputation as a great clutch shooter. The reality was that if he had missed, Michigan would certainly have won in overtime.
- Anticipating that the winner would be a decided underdog against UConn, it was reminiscent of 1966, when the Utah-Texas Western semi-final winner was given little or no chance to beat Kentucky. But form does not always hold. Sometimes, making history-making takes precedence.
- Larranaga (like Kenny Smith) played for legendary Coach Jack Curran at Queens’ Archbishop Mulloy, whereas opposing coach Danny Hurley (considerably younger) played for his famous dad Bob Hurley at Newark’s Saint Anthony’s. New York-New Jersey prominence once more!
- You knew it was a big game when Rebecca Lobo appeared in the booth with both shoulders covered.