Happy to report that my Final Four bracket remains intact.
Ohio State, TCU, Southern Cal, Clemson...
In all seriousness, what a day of basketball. Five one-point games in one day, an NCAA record. Eleven games decided by a combined total of just 32 points.
One Clemson-themed storyline yesterday was watching VCU and LSU look like ... Clemson. Shaka Smart's team looked lost on offense late, throwing bad passes and missing shots at the rim. LSU went the final 10:30 without a field goal, meaning the Bayou Bengals and Tigers combined for second-half field-goal droughts of more than 24 minutes in recent games against N.C. State.
Anyway, fun day.
A few March Madness links:
-- Here's the story from VCU's narrow loss to Ohio State.
A theme emerged among the quiet conversations in VCU's locker room Thursday.
Uncharacteristic.
The Rams battled Ohio State tooth and nail and had opportunities to win in their NCAA opener. Ultimately, missed shots they usually make, costly turnovers they usually don't make, and D'Angelo Russell combined for make just enough of a difference to push Ohio State into the next round with a 75-72 overtime victory.
The 10th-seeded Buckeyes (24-10) will play No. 2 seed Arizona (32-3), a 93-72 winner over Texas Southern, in the Round of 32 on Saturday. VCU finished 26-10.
"It hurts a lot because I feel like we should be playing on Saturday," said VCU guard Melvin Johnson, who had 17 points and made some big 3-pointers that gave the Rams the lead near the end of regulation.
-- From a few days ago: The Washington Post asks why Smart is still at VCU.
What is Shaka Smart still doing at Virginia Commonwealth? Why does the coach who led a mid-major to the Final Four four years ago spurn UCLA and Marquette and Wake Forest and anyone else who asks? Start at Kenyon College, and then look here: The VCU media guide includes each player's parents in his profile. For five of them there is a mother or grandmother listed and no father. Smart will not make his players feel the way Bill Brown made him feel.
"That experience had an influence in my life in general," Smart said. "That was one of the worst days in my life, to be honest with you. It really shook me up."
And this:
Coaches are, by nature, strivers. Smart is, by nature, a man who rejects convention. When VCU hired him, other coaches recommend he fire the basketball secretary and bring in his own. VCU's secretary had been there for 31 years. Smart met with Dianne Long, and he thought it would be ridiculous to fire her. "Thank God he just did his own thing," VCU Athletic Director Ed McLaughlin said. "Because Dianne is great!
"He and I both subscribe to the thought that the only person who knows what makes you happy is you," McLaughlin added. "A lot of people have opinions of what should make you happy."
"He's always been one of my favorite people just because he's truly himself," Arizona Coach Sean Miller said. "He doesn't try to be anybody that he isn't."
-- North Carolina feels "lucky" and "relieved" after squeaking by Hah-vud.
After he'd said that this was the "luckiest I've ever felt after a basketball game in my entire life," North Carolina coach Roy Williams walked into his team's locker room on Thursday night and assumed a fighter's stance, his fists up.
Brice Johnson, the Tar Heels' junior forward, joined him momentarily and they pantomimed a boxing match, and Kennedy Meeks entered the fray and all around them UNC players laughed and reveled in a small, light moment - one that only existed because a bounce of a basketball went UNC's way.
That was the margin for the Tar Heels on Thursday night during a 67-65 victory against Harvard in the NCAA tournament. If the Crimson's Wesley Saunders had made the 3-pointer he attempted in the final seconds, UNC's season likely would have ended.
Williams and his players would have walked back into the locker room and packed their things. Their season would have been over. They would have gone back to Chapel Hill. Williams, for the first time, would have coached a team to a loss in its first NCAA tournament game.
"Lucky," Johnson said, before saying it again. "That's all I'm going to say. We are lucky. Because if that would have went in - man. It would have been a whole different feeling in here right now."
-- In this excellent feature by David Teel, Tony Bennett gives insight into his humility and faith.
Tony Bennett was at peace. At first inclined to accept the University of Virginia's head basketball coaching position, he had elected to remain at Washington State, a program he had steered to new heights and a school he had come to embrace.
But as Bennett dialed Cavaliers athletic director Craig Littlepage, his wife, Laurel, interrupted.
"Put the phone down."
Sensing uncertainty in her husband, she suggested that he take more time. To think. To pray.
Bennett hung up.
That moment six years ago, life-altering for so many, captures the core of the man and the coach who has restored Virginia to national prominence. Faith. Family. Humility.
"My faith - that defines me," Bennett said. "That's what gives me my meaning and purpose and how I try to treat people and live my life. I make so many mistakes, and the fact that I know I'm forgiven is probably the greatest joy that I have. That is the bedrock of my life and the foundation of why I coach and how I coach."
-- Here's the story from LSU's side of the agonizing second-half scoring drought.
That added up to a 3:59 scoring drought to end the game (no made field goals the final 10:26), which allowed the Wolfpack to grind and chip away and finally erase every thread of a deficit that was 14 points at halftime and grew as large as 16.
That margin, which seemed awfully cozy with 9:15 to go, wasn't enough, though.
Going 12-for-22 at the free-throw line, 8-for-17 after halftime simply made it impossible for LSU to nail down the win.
Mickey, the All-SEC forward who was splendid on defense with 6 blocks, and snatched 14 rebounds, went 0-for-2 twice in a 22-second span, each time missing a chance to pad a 65-62 lead.
In the locker room afterward, the normally stoic Mickey was inconsolable.
"I missed free throws and missed a shot right there at the basket," he said through sobs.
-- This story from Cleveland says the Buckeyes' win was all about matchups.
"It is about matchups," Ohio State coach Thad Matta said. He always says that about the NCAA Tournament. For years that's been his go-to phrase.
And against the Rams, the Buckeyes -- despite being plagued by many of the things that haunted them during an inconsistent regular season (slow start, poor free throw shooting, inconsistent post play) -- used those matchups to advance to Saturday to face No. 2 Arizona.
"There were like three different games being played out there today," Matta said. "There was the big lineup for both teams, the small lineup for both teams, the zone lineup. There were different things going on to create matchups we were trying to get."
-- And the state of Texas is ready to dump its high school steroid testing program.
When Texas officials launched a massive public high school steroids testing program over fears of rampant doping from the football fields to the tennis courts, they promised a model program for the rest of the country to follow.
But almost no one did. And after spending $10 million testing more than 63,000 students to catch just a handful of cheaters, Texas lawmakers appear likely to defund the program this summer. If they do, New Jersey and Illinois will have the only statewide high school steroids testing programs left.
Even those who pushed for the Texas program in 2007 now call it a colossal misfire, either a waste of money or too poorly designed to catch the drug users some insist are slipping through the cracks.
"I believe we made a huge mistake," said Don Hooton, who started the Taylor Hooton Foundation for steroid abuse education after his 17-year-old son's 2003 suicide was linked to the drug's use, and was one of the key advocates in creating the Texas program.
Hooton believes the low number of positive tests doesn't mean Texas athletes are clean, only that they're not getting caught because of inadequate testing and loopholes that allow them to cheat the process.
"Coaches, schools, and politicians have used the abysmal number of positive tests to prove there's no steroid problem," Hooton said. "What did we do here? We just lulled the public to sleep."
LW
This post was edited on 3/20 8:33 AM by Larry_Williams
