09 Apr07 - Relentless (POSTSEASON)

Volume XIII, No. 22 - 09 Apr 7: POSTSEASON

Relentless

Finish what you started. The North Carolina Tar Heels completed what was really a three-year mission for the core nucleus of players -- a national championship. Two years ago, (then along with senior tReyshawn Terry and freshman fBrandan Wright), sophomores fTyler Hansbrough and tDanny Green, together with freshmen pTy Lawson, gWayne Ellington and fDeon Thompson, seemingly had the East Regional final against Georgetown in hand with only 8 minutes left in the game. But instead of going into control mode, they continue to fire up quick shots (but went 1-for-23) and lost to the Hoyas in OT. Last year, "on a mission", they improved one step by making the Final Four, only to be trounced from the opening tap by a physical, loose Kansas squad that led 38-10 before they knew what hit them. This year, still "on a mission", the same nucleus (now all upperclassmen) came back one more time with nothing less than the ultimate prize in mind. Their 89-@72 win over Michigan State in the final -- powered by a tourney record 55-@34 halftime lead -- seemed easy by the end of it.
     In the preseason, UNC was such an overwhelming favorite that you wondered whether they could make a run at an undefeated season. But injuries quickly put that in doubt (as well as the wisdom of returning for another year) as fHansbrough had a stress reaction in his leg even before the season got under way. fMarcus Ginyard, their defensive stopper, had a foot injury which became a complete medical redshirt season. Expectations were lowered, but they were still the ACC favorites, by far. Then, an 0-2 start put even the ACC regular season title in doubt. Now Roy Williams certainly had the most talented roster available to any coach this season, but he still faced some coaching challenges that shouldn't be underplayed -- (not the least of which was the risk of being blamed for ruining fHansbrough's career if his injury was mismanaged). But his squad regrouped and eventually won the regular season title by a two-game gap. Then, pTy Lawson had a toe injury that forced him to miss the ACC tournament -- the supposedly invincible Tar Heels were shown to be all too beatable, struggling to win one game while losing the next without him. But Roy managed that adversity well also, keeping pLawson out of the first round of the NCAA tournament and nursing a fantastic second round performance out of him while still clearly gimpy.
     Once they were able to fire on all cylinders the final two weekends of the tournament, though, no one even came close to challenging them. No one could stop them from running, and no one could match their scoring in uptempo contests -- not Gonzaga (a great running team itself), not Oklahoma (despite an impressive game from Player of the Year cBlake Griffin), not tough Villanova (which had been able to shut down finesse Duke and bruising Pitt with its own physical play), and not even stern Michigan State (fortified by a supportive home-state crowd of more than 70,000; which had been able to knock off two seemingly unbeatable Big East juggernauts, Louisville and Connecticut). The most pressure packed possessions the Tar Heels faced in the final was needing a basket to maintain a 13-point lead. In big moments, Williams' teams dont' tend to slow things down and buckle down to make "the big stop"; instead, they're relentless -- they push the pace even more and win by tiring out their opponents who just can't stay with them. That only works if you have an overwhelmingly talented and deep roster, which this UNC squad certainly does.
     After running through the tournament in such dominant fashion, could this team have made a better run at an undefeated season? Give full credit to tremendous individual performances by Boston College's pTyrese Rice and Maryland's tGreivis Vasquez in their teams upset wins; and discount entirely the pLawson-less results of the ACC tournament; but only the 3-point road loss at Wake Forest may have been truly beyond a reasonable expectation for them to win. But can you really denigrate a team for not going undefeated? No way. Focus on the plusses: pTy Lawson emerged as the ACC Player of the Year this year when he had last year's National Player of the Year as a teammate. And cTyler Hansbrough capped a spectacular career as one of the greatest players ever at UNC, in the ACC, and college basketball as a whole: the NCAA's all-time leader in free throws made; the National Player of the Year as a junior; the ACC (and UNC's) all-time leading scorer (without the three-pointer's being much of a part of his aresnal); the first player to be (unanimous) first-team all-ACC all four years and the first ACC player to lead his team in scoring and rebounding all four years. (Have I left anything out?) Should he have come back for his senior year? Is there any doubt?

The theme of the regular season was the utter dominance of the Big East. Ten of its 16 teams were in and out of the Top 25 rankings all year long and it wound up with three #1-seeds for the NCAA tournament, a first for any conference. It placed 5 teams in the Sweet 16, and 4 teams in the Elite Eight, also first-time accomplishments for any league. It seemed poised to repeat the best Final Four performance by a conference as well (3 teams and 2 finalists by the '85 Big East), but things took a turn from that point. None of the Big Three (Louisville, Pittsburgh and Connecticut) choked -- they were outplayed by their opponents in their three losses. So you may be able to say that their seeming invincibility was overhype by big-market media bias. To oversell the performances by Michigan State (twice) and Villanova in beating Louisville and Connecitcut (MICH ST) and Pitt (NOVA) makes them seem like fluke upsets and diminishes those squads.
     The Spartans were a tremendously tough team: quick and strong at every spot, with players who could defend, handle and shoot. First, they took away LVILLE's points-off-turnover offense in their 64-@52 win; then, they shut down UCONN's outside attack, winning @82-73. Meanwhile, the Wildcats turned in an all around great performance (complete with a buzzer-beater ending) to defeat PITT 76-74 in the East final. But they couldn't match pace with UNC (shooting 5-for-27 on three-pointers) in a 69-83 loss in the Final Four.

Getting shut out of any victories at the Final Four is a bitter finish for the BIG EAST, which might have been able to claim the greatest season of any conference ever. Instead, their depth still makes them the best conference overall for the season (2 Final Four teams, 4 Elite Eight teams, 5 Sweet 16 teams; and an NIT semifinalist -- and featured The Greatest Game Ever Played: Syracuse's @127-117(6OT) mega-thriller over UConn in the BIG EAST tournament in Madison Square Garden), but it's not without argument. The ACC does have the overall national champion; but the rest of its teams fared poorly in the NCAA tournament (only one other team made Sweet 16), and its two NIT participants failed to make even the quarterfinals. Besides the national runner-up, the BIG 10 had a second Sweet 16 team, and the (Silver Medal prize) NIT champ in Penn State (which defeated Baylor @69-63 in the final). The Big 12 had 2 Elite Eight teams, a third team made Sweet 16, and the NIT runner-up. The Pac-10 managed only a single Sweet 16 team, but it did claim the Bronze Medal prize as First Brother-In-Law Craig Robinson's Oregon State squad won the second annual CBI tournament crown, 2-1 over UTEP (finishing with a true road win 81-@73 in the deciding game). The SEC was a complete flop: only one team even managed a single NCAA tournament win, 3 teams did make the NIT quarterfinals but none made it any further. It was a performance that was barely worthy of Mid-Major status, not BCS.
     The "Power" Mid-Majors (C-USA, A-10 and WCC) did place their power teams (Memphis, Xavier and Gonzaga) into the Sweet 16 (and C-USA's UTEP made the CBI final series). The "Regular" Mid-Majors also had their splash moments: Cleveland State (HORIZON), Siena (MAAC) and Western Kentucky (SUN BELT) all came through with first-round wins. In the inaugural (Copper Medal prize) CIT, it was Old Dominion (COLONIAL) winning on the road at Bradley (MVC), 66-@62.

The era of the superfrosh didn't continue this season. Only Memphis' b-turned-pTyreke Evans was truly the best player on a major team. Instead, it was the leftover crop from the spectacular Class of 2011 which continued to dominate the landscape as sophomores. cBlake Griffin was National Player Of The Year. The entire BIG 10 first team was sophomores, including POY pKalin Lucas (MSU), tRobbie Hummel (Purdue) and bManny Harris (Michigan). Pittsburgh's cDeJuan Blair was co-Big East Player of the Year. bJames Harden led Arizona State and the Pac-10. Syracuse's pJonny Flynn was perhaps the nation's second-best point guard (behind UNC's pTy Lawson). tKyle Singler led Duke, pJeff Teague and fJames Johnson led Wake Forest, and don't forget the likes of pPatrick Mills (St. Mary's) and cMatt Howard (Butler).

It hardly seems worth a mention that the NCAA pushed back the three-point line by a foot this season. Did anyone really notice? Big-time shooters still had big-time performances. Maybe some bad-shooting teams were really bad when they were trying to make desperate comebacks, but it was hardly a major factor.

MSU's Tom Izzo was able to maintain a streak of having every recuiting class of his make the Final Four during their careers. Since coming to UNC 6 years ago now, Roy Williams has done one better: every player in that span has participated in a national championship. This year's North Carolina Tar Heels did indeed Finish Their Business, in relentless fashion.

Thanks for reading the HLS columns this year. I hope you've enjoyed reading them as much as I've enjoyed writing them.

See y'all next year!

-- Ron