Monday, April 8, 2013
1 Game to Go
Atlanta:
8:23 CDT: #1 Louisville (34-5) v. # 5 Michigan (31-7)
A few observations as this season (finally) comes to an end.
1. I'm pretty sure that no previous college basketball game has ever been played so late in the year.
2. Ken Pomeroy, who went 2-0 in the semi-final games on Saturday, likes Louisville over Michigan by 71 to 66.
3. I think it's a shame that Chris Webber apparently won't be attending tonight's game, but then again, few great athletes have caused as much disappointment for me as Chris Webber.
4. Louisville has the most efficient defense in the country, while Michigan has the nation's most efficient offense.
5. The UK fan base is divided over the issue of whether we should support U of L tonight, given that the Cardinals are located in our beloved Commonwealth. I rooted for Louisville in 1980 (against UCLA) and in 1986 (against Duke), and I rooted for them last week when they beat Duke again. I would root for them against Kansas, UNC, Duke, or UCLA under almost any conditions. But I will not be rooting for them tonight. Here are my primary reasons:
a. To say that U of L fans never root for UK is a massive understatement. I'm not sure than any fan base hates any other team or fan base as much as U of L fans hate UK and its fans. Compared to how U of L fans talk about UK, Red Sox fans think the Yankees are good guys. I believe most U of L fans would actually prefer that the NCAA shut down the UK program altogether.
b. I have never seen any evidence that U of L fans are proud to be from Kentucky. In fact, they seem to hate the rest of the Commonwealth and constantly accuse the rest of us of racism and illiteracy. So the whole "They're from Kentucky" card seems particularly inappropriate here.
c. Louisville-based sportswriters, from Billy Reed to Pat Forde, have tormented UK and its fans for decades, and have played a major role in convincing the National Media that Kentucky is an evil, cheating program with evil, racist fans. These same sportswriters have been passionate supporters of the University of Louisville.
d. While I do not have to put up with U of L fans in my personal life, I think Kentucky fans should have some sympathy for those UK fans in and around Jefferson County. By all accounts, those Wildcat fans will suffer terribly if U of L wins tonight.
e. No fan base has ever loved and supported a coach more than UK fans loved and supported Rick Pitino, and no fan base in any sport has ever been treated more shabbily by one of its heroes. In fact, considering that by taking the U of L job, Pitino not only declared war on the Kentucky fans, but also helped to destroy the career of Tubby Smith (his own former assistant), I think that Pitino's decision to become the coach at Louisville is one of the most hateful and malevolent things I've seen in forty years of watching sports. (And don't tell me Pitino didn't know how UK fans would react, or what it would mean for Tubby. Pitino is a genius, he was the face of the UK program for eight years, and he knows Tubby very well. I knew that Tubby was doomed the day Pitino accepted the job, and I knew the UK fans would explode with rage when Pitino showed up at Freedom Hall. Pitino knew those things even better than I did.)
f. This Louisville team is the most violent basketball team I have ever seen, and they only survived the semi-final because in the last fourteen minutes of their game with Wichita State, they committed approximately 850 fouls that were not called. If a team with almost no basketball skill is able to win the National Championship by turning the NCAA Tournament into a rugby scrum, that would be terrible for the game. On the other hand, Michigan has brought offense and passing into the Big 10, a league where such concepts were almost non-existent a few years ago. A victory for Michigan would be a victory for clean basketball that rewards skills like passing, dribbling, and shooting.
6. Louisville has to be regarded as the favorite tonight, if only because of their manic intensity. I have never seen any basketball team play as hard as the Cardinals; they are the Terminator of basketball. But I believe that, for the first time in the whole tournament, the Cardinals have been unfortunate in tonight's match-up. U of L knows all about Syracuse's zone, and they would have had an easy win tonight if the Cuse had managed to beat Michigan. But Michigan has guys who can actually shoot the ball, they have already been banged around by the likes of Kansas and Michigan State, and they absolutely shredded Florida (which is, in many ways, a mini-Louisville) in the Elite Eight.
7. It's surprisingly rare to get to the finals without one team being an overwhelming favorite. This is the first time since Kansas played Memphis in 2008 that I really don't have a strong sense of who will win the Final. If the officials force Louisville to play basketball (instead of meekly swallowing their whistles with the foolish excuse that the "players should decide the game") we could see a classic.
UPDATE (11:58 A.M.): According to the Courier-Journal, some students at U of L responded to their team's victory over Wichita State by chanting "a profanity directed at the University of Kentucky."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The UK message board reports that this morning, Jay Bilas was on the radio referring to Louisville's defense as "organized fouling." Mike Tirico apparently told Mike and Mike that something has to be done about college officiating, and that Louisville's players would foul out of an NBA game in about five or six minutes.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see if the powers that be decide to crack down on a lot of the physical play.
Bilas has been yelling all year about this problem. The problem is this isn't NC State beating Houston if Louisville wins. At the time Louisville is more representative of the norm in college basketball, not the exception.
DeleteBilas is right, and it needs to be fixed. But I think we will start to see a change in the near future, as teams like Syracuse, Louisville and Pittsburgh will not be able to play the same style in the ACC that they played in the Big East.
DeleteI definitely hope it changes. I find almost any men's game not involving WKU or UK to be almost unwatchable.
Delete5d ... bingo. I imagine that's the big dividing line. I'll bet that UK fans who have friends who are U of L fans are rooting for U of L tonight and that UK fans who don't have friends who are U of L fans are rooting for Michigan, by and large. That's not to say that your other points here aren't valid, but I imagine 5d is really the line in the sand between the two camps of UK folk today.
ReplyDeleteI think it mostly cuts the other way. If you are a UK fan who knows U of L fans, then you probably hate the Cardinals and are rooting against them, if only because you are so tired of hearing the U of L fans go on about how UK and its fans are a bunch of racist cheaters. If you are a UK fan who doesn't know many U of L fans, then you will probably find it easier to think of Louisville as another Kentucky school and to root for them.
DeleteYou and I know different types of U of L fans.
DeleteI have friends who are U of L fans and so I'll be rooting for U of L. Plus they are in KY and so I'll be rooting for U of L. I don't care about what Pitino has done by going to U of L, I will be rooting for Pitino and U of L. GO CARDS!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, this is basically where I come down, too. My kid's dentist and her husband went to U of L, and I went to WKU with a bunch of U of L fans. And I love the city of Louisville.
DeleteOn Rupp's Rafters right now, the vote is 31 people rooting for Louisville, with 88 rooting for Michigan. My guess is that the typical UK fan is somewhat less anti-Louisville than the Rupp's Rafters crowd. So it's probably true that most UK fans are rooting for Michigan, but the margin probably isn't as large as this vote would indicate.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing is I have such a bad dislike of the Fab Five and the Michigan 93 team, that I would actually root for Duke of Michigan.
DeleteThe only teams that I tend to root against in almost any circumstance are the rest of the SEC, UAB and Duke. And as long as Vandy is not playing UK or WKU, I tend to soften toward them in support of Go Heath and my wife. I could see myself loosening up on Ole Miss now, too. My favorite fans to josh are the Murray State people. I usually mention once a year or so to my sister-in-law and father-in-law each that I heard the legislature is thinking about making the teacher's college a full-blown university next session.
DeletePublic Policy Polling of Raleigh surveyed 1,052 Kentucky voters April 5-7. Sixty-eight percent said they considered themselves to be more of a Kentucky sports fan than a Louisville fan; 20 percent said they were more of a Louisville fan than Kentucky. Seventy-eight percent of the respondents said they are rooting for U of L.
ReplyDeleteAlso from PPP, HeathPowise: HPKo10* is GOP No. 2 with a bullet.
DeleteIt is absurd that PPP is not polling Hillary v. Jeb Bush, when they are the two strongest candidates in each party.
DeleteAs for Rand Paul, it is more likely that the GOP will cease to exist than that the Republicans will nominate Rand Paul for President in 2016.
Yeah, it appears they cut off the head-to-head polling after Paul Ryan, but they say that they have Ryan tied for Jeb for fourth among the GOP potential nominees.
DeletePer your point about no calls and letting the players play ... hear, hear. Strict-constructionist enforcement of the rules is letting the players decide the outcome. Loosening or tightening of the rules per the magnitude of the game, time on the clock or playing style of the teams involved shifts control of the outcome to the subjectivity of the officials.
ReplyDeleteFirst-half statistics:
ReplyDeleteMichigan:
14-28 from the field (50 percent)
4-6 from the line (67 percent)
6-11 from 3-point range (54 percent)
Louisville:
12-26 from the field (46 percent)
8-9 from the line (88 percent)
5-8 from 3-point range (63 percent)
It's incredible to me that Michigan has shot fewer free throws than Louisville. When Pitino coached UK against Arizona in the 1997 final, Arizona shot 41 free throws.
There are currently 4,298 people on the Rupp's Rafters Message Board.
ReplyDeleteWhat a program.
What a Commonwealth.
With three minutes to go, U of L is 8-14 from three-point range. The Cardinals made only 32.9 percent of their three-pointers all year. No one can beat them when they are that hot from the outside.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, it was just insane for Michigan to have Trey Burke miss 11 minutes of the first half because he had two fouls. The National Championship game is only 40 minutes long, and it's hard to win when your best player is on the bench for 11 minutes.
ReplyDeleteThis will be the fifth time in a row that a Big 10 team has lost the NCAA Final. The other losers were Indiana in 2002, Illinois in 2005, Ohio State in 2007, and Michigan State in 2009.
ReplyDeleteThe last Big 10 team to go all the way was Michigan State in 2000.
Michigan also missed a ton of free throws. With 1:40 to go, they are 16-23 from the line. That's not going to get it done against the Ville.
ReplyDeleteThis is the least-talented collection of players to win the national championship in many years. But this may be the best coaching job I have ever seen.
ReplyDeleteHURRAH!
ReplyDeleteAll along™ ... pretty much.
ReplyDelete