12 Apr 3 - Undeterred (POSTSEASON)

Volume XVI, No. 22 - 12 Apr 3: POSTSEASON

Undeterred

Yes, they were (by far) the most talented roster in the land (including this year's near-unanimous Player of the Year), but these [S1]Kentucky Wildcats were truly a team. Coach John Calipari achieved something that's a lot harder than it seems in molding a collecton of Golden Child superstars into a cohesive unit that played excellent team defense and shared the ball unselfishly on offense. (Compare this team to North Carolina on those qualities to recognize what Coach Cal accomplished.)

    
Give [M2]Kansas credit for not giving up after going down 18 in the first half of the national championship game. The final could have been a laugher by halftime, but the Jayhawks fought back to make it 41-27 at the break, and (with the UK backing off from its near-perfect first-half execution) made the second half interesting enough to get within 5 points with two minutes to go. But with so much talent to draw on collectively, no one Kentucky player had to do it all himself. Most Outstanding Player cAnthony Davis was great defensively (16r6b) but wasn't great offensively (6p5a;1/10fg); this time gDoron Lamb(22p) supplied the offensive punch when needed. gTyshawn Taylor(19p5to) and cThomas Robinson(18p17r) played admirably, but KU couldn't deliver the Villanova-esque performance that would have been necessary to beat this squad.

    
Is Kentucky '12 one of the all-time great teams? Its top 6 players compare favorably to any team you could name; but:
-- [A] it failed to go undefeated (so Indiana '76, U.C.L.A. '64,'67,'72,'73, North Carolina '57 and San Francisco '56
all have something it can't claim);
-- [B]cDavis, fTerrence Jones and fMichael Kidd-Gilchrist aren't likely to come back to try to repeat next year (so it won't match Florida '06-07, Duke '91-92, U.C.L.A. '64-65,'67-73, 'Cincinnati '61-62,
San Francisco '55-56, Kentucky '48-49 and Oklahoma A&M '45-46); and
-- [C] (worst of all) it left the SEC tournament crown on the table (so even Kansas '08, Duke '01, Connecticut '99, Kentucky '98, Georgetown '84, North Carolina '82 and North Carolina State '74 have BCS TiTo credentials it doesn't).

    
But these 'Cats could probably beat many of the others mentioned here.

In the semifinals, [W4]Louisville pulled its smoke and mirrors act again and hung around [S1]Kentucky enough to make things uncomfortable, (but still never in doubt). The Cardinals weren't particularly hitting from outside and kept trying to score inside way too much. Only cAnthony Davis(18p14r5b) had a particularly noteworthy game for the Wildcats, but they have so many pieces that no one player has to do it all.

    
The one full strength head-to-head matchup between Elite Eight teams proved to be as great as expected. [S2]Ohio State took a 13-point lead in the first half behind solid halfcourt D and hitting some threes; but fThomas Robinson(19p8r)'s combination of quickness and strength and foul trouble for bDeShaun Thomas(9p;3/14fg) turned the game around for [M2]Kansas in the second half. cJeff Withey(7 blocks) held fJared Sullinger(13p11r;5/19fg) in check and gAaron Craft kept pTyshawn Taylor(10p9a5to) from dominating; 15p6r from bTravis Releford and 13p10r from xElijah Johnson provided the edge over bWilliam Buford(19p7r). Usually poised OSU crumbled in the final endplay as things slipped away in a game it initially controlled.

In the NIT, it was (3w)Stanford (25-11) [not (1m)Washington] who claimed the crown on behalf of the much maligned PAC-12, in a rout (75-51) in the final over (6s)Minnesota, in fact. (The Cardinal couldn't close out Syracuse in the final of the NIT SEASON TIP-OFF back in November, but it returned to the scene and put away [a much easier opponent].)

    
In CBI final series between BCS busts, Pittsburgh (22-17) won 2-1 over Washington State (66-@67, @57-53, @71-65), giving the BIG EAST a postseason crown.

    
In the CIT (which featured no BCS participants), it was Mercer (26-11), which couldn't win the A-SUN tournament on its own home floor [upset by [6a]Florida Gulf Coast, no less], who won three straight road games (including the final at Utah State) to take the crown and claim a postseason trophy for the 1BCs.

    
Expanding to 68 teams has diluted both the NCAAs and all the consolation tournaments so much that between the NIT, CBI and CIT champs, the only team of accomplishment that any of them beat on the way to their crowns was Stanford's home rout of WAC titlist Nevada. (Not saying much, other than these aren't the days where we need four postseason tourneys.)

The season started with the question of whether any of the three preseason juggernauts (veteran North Carolina and Ohio State as well as new-look Kentucky) could make a serious run at going undefeated. Kentucky and North Carolina met in The Game of the Year in December with the Wildcats prevailing at the buzzer on cAnthony Davis' block of cJohn Henson's jumper. Indiana ended UK's dream on tChristian Watford's game-winning three while Ohio State fell at Kansas without cJared Sullinger. Syracuse, Missouri and Baylor continued to win, but it was 1BC Murray State that was the last undefeated team standing before suffering its first loss at Tennessee State in early February. Meanwhile, an "Elite Eight" teams (UK, 'Cuse, UNC, OSU, Mizzou, Kansas and Duke) separated themselves from the rest of the pack, all looking like easy locks for the Sweet 16 and beyond. (Two historic shockers knocked out Missouri and Duke right away; BIG EAST tourney champ Louisville stunned Michigan State in the Round of 16; and ineligiblity and injury prevented Syracuse and North Carolina from competing at full strength in their Elite Eight showdowns. UK, Kansas and OSU plowed through to the Final Four.)

    
The BIG 10, BIG 12 and BIG EAST had multiple teams ranked highly all year. The SEC's top three were solid and the ACC wound up stronger at the end of the season than it appeared to be most of the way through. The newly fortified/renamed PAC-12 was a bust -- it couldnt' win a single preseason tournament and its teams were rated so poorly that regular season champ Washington didn't even get an NCAA bid (a first for a BCS conference). (BCS busts Stanford and Pittsburgh did rub salt into the wounds of the Mid-Majors by taking the NIT and CBI crowns.)

    
The Mid-Majors began the year with strong expectations on paper with Butler, VCU, Xavier, Gonzaga/St. Mary's, Memphis and Creighton all appearing to be Anti-Spoiler-quality favorites. Only the MOUNTAIN WEST looked to be on a downswing with depleted BYU departed for the WEST COAST and with San Diego State having lost four starters from its all-time best 2010 squad -- but it turned out to be UNLV who made the biggest noise, handing North Carolina its first loss with a home-away-from-home win in the LAS VEGAS-THANKSGIVING final. Meanwhile, Butler flopped and VCU and Memphis struggled early on. Xavier collapsed after an ugly brawl with city rival Cincinnati in their annual CROSSTOWN SHOOTOUT, resulting in multiple player suspensions and destroying confidence and chemistry (but both teams eventually regrouped to make the NCAA Sweet 16). Gonzaga played a tough out-of-conference schedule with so-so results, but St. Mary's turned it on in conference and ended the 'Zags 11-year title streak becoming TiTo champs of the WCC. Drexel (and VCU) came on strong inside their leagues and Memphis regrouped as well. Wichita State thumped Creighton to take the MISSOURI VALLEY title, but the Bluejays took the tourney crown. The COLONIAL and HORIZON wound up as One-Bid Conferences (although VCU was an endplay possession away from making the Sweet 16) and St. Louis saw to it that Memphis didn't get out of the NCAA second round. Claiming some important preseason crowns (St. Louis[76/ANAHEIM], Dayton[OS/ORLANDO]), with Xavier regrouping to make the Sweet 16, and with Massachusetts earning a semifinal spot in New York in the NIT, it's the ATLANTIC 10 which turned out to be the strongest (of a weak year) among the MMs).

    
The 1BCs started the year with only a few veteran teams poised to make noise: Long Beach State, Belmont, Harvard and UNC-Asheville. Harvard did manage to win a preseason tourney [PARADISE], beating eventual ACC tourney champ Florida State along the way; and they all made the NCAAs (all TiTo champs besides the Crimson). Davidson/SOUTHERN(Tito) pulled off the most shocking results -- a road win at eventual NCAA runner-up Kansas. Murray State/OVC(Tito) was in the spotlight all season for being the last unbeaten team to lose (and the Racers did the 1BC world proud with a second-round splash win to boot). But, after a terrible showing in 2010, the 1BCs exploded in the 2011 NCAAs, claiming a Sweet 16 spot (Ohio University/MAC) and two #15/#2 upset shockers over two of the vaunted "Elite Eight": Norfolk State/MEAC over Missouri and Lehigh/PATRIOT over Duke in Greensboro. All in all, a great sign of the healthy state of college basketball.

We've only seen the opening shifts in the multi-year Great Conference Migration -- BIG 10 and PAC-12 up to 12 teams; BIG 12 down to 10 teams. Much more is coming as teams and conferences realign mostly in an effort to become automatic BCS qualifiers for the football bowl revenue. Many traditional rivalries may go by the wayside before all the dust settles. Don't be fooled by the popularity of the NCAA basketball tournament -- it's football that drives the bus.

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This was a much more settled down season for me this year without all of the hectic travel and duties from a year ago. Hopefully, this year's column had more in-depth analysis and was worth reading. I continue to enjoy writing it as much as ever. Thanks, as always, for all the feedback and support.
[Congratulations to the winner of this year's Hoops Contest: Josh Henneman of Vestal, NY over 161 contestants.]

See y'all next year on The Road To ATLANTA! (I NEED TICKETS!!!)

-- Ron