By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
OAKLAND, Calif. – “Those are the last fans you’ll see this tournament,” or words to that effect, Dan Hicks told viewers on the Golf Channel. “And there aren’t that many.”
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SAN JOSE — The nickname is out of a comic strip. The roster is packed with the offspring of NBA stars. We’re talking about UC Irvine, out there in Orange County, not too far from Disneyland, an institution jokingly referred to as the “University of Caucasian Isolation.”
Copyright 2019 The Maven
By Art Spander
SAN ANTONIO — Those Philly jokes, how the fans once booed Santa Claus before a football game, all the zingers by the comedians who had a reference about brotherly love? Well, look who’s laughing now. And cheering.
First the Eagles win the Super Bowl. Then Villanova wins the NCAA basketball championship. Any day now, the Phillies could win the World Series. Well, let’s not get carried away.
But Villanova certainly carried the title away, for the second time in three years, destroying what we believed to be a solid Michigan team, 79-62, on Monday night at the Alamodome.
The Wildcats had Michigan coach John Beilein sighing, “We didn’t make some shots we usually make ... We needed to play better, but even if we played our best it would have been difficult to win that game with what DiVincenzo did.”
That’s Donte DiVincenzo, who had 31 for Nova.
A little honesty there. A little candor. A lot of awe.
Villanova won all six of its tournament games by at least 10 points. The semi-little Catholic school (enrollment around 10,000) could be building a dynasty.
No seniors in the lineup, although both Jalen Brunson, the AP national player of the year, and Mikal Bridges will probably leave for the NBA. No one-and-dones. Just a lot of talented kids who were brought in by coach Jay Wright and allowed to develop.
Not that they don’t arrive ready to play. DiVincenzo, voted most outstanding player in the final, is a red-shirt sophomore. He got 19 of his 31 in the first half.
Scoring is what the Wildcats do. They led the country in that stat.
They also lead the country in what matters most, winning the big one.
But what made the difference Monday night was the way Villanova played defense. Michigan jumped into a 21-14 lead midway through the first half. Nova was missing the threes it made in the semifinal against Kansas. But soon after, it wouldn’t miss the chance to dominate the game.
By halftime, Nova was up 37-28 and shooting 45 percent. Then they started connecting. Then the result became foregone. Villanova went ahead by 22. Cue up “One Shining Moment.”
The 31 by DiVincenzo, who entered with some two and a half minutes gone, were the most ever in a title game by a non-starter.
“All I was trying to do was play hard,” said DiVicenzo, who is from Delaware, near Philly.
Such humility. ”He’s a killer,” said Bridges. “He came out there and was aggressive, defensively and offensively. He carried us tonight.”
And he has two more years of eligibility.
“They saw a championship team two years ago,” said Beilein, referring to when Nova beat North Carolina in the last second of the 2016 final. “They said, let’s work and get better. So many young men are in a hurry to get out of the best years of their life. I like the way Jay Wright recruits, getting kids with the right values.”
That’s fine. But they also need the right skills. The Nova athletes certainly have them.
“Anytime you get in a rhythm like that,” Michigan’s Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman said of DiVincenzo, “you can pull up from anywhere and just knock it down. It’s tougth to stop.”
Basketball is getting people who know how to play to improve as the days and months go on; to feel confident and comfortable with your teammates and yourself. Villanova has achieved all of that.
“Villanova,” said Beilein, “has done a great job of getting the right kids. And we try as well. When you look at the whole package, they have it, experience, rare in college basketball, shooters at every position and defenders.
“That team right there could win a lot of Final Fours, not just one in 2018.”
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
SAN ANTONIO — The official end of the miracle, if not the game, came with 1:39 on the clock. That’s when a crew brought the wheelchair that had been Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt’s throne the past few weeks down to the concourse in front of the stands, where she watched from near the tunnel.
Loyola, which had led by 10 in the second half, now trailed by eight. Not even the smile of the 98-year-old nun who had become the mascot of Loyola-Chicago — and, for much of March, the face of college basketball — was going to change the eventual result.
Copyright © 2018 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
LOS ANGELES — The place, Southern California, Staples Center, where the Lakers, Clippers and hockey Kings all play, seemed like Ann Arbor West.
A crowd that started the game chanting “Let’s go, Blue!” ended up singing “Hail to the Victors,” the Michigan fight song, because the Blue, Michigan, is going to the Final Four.
Copyright © 2018 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
LOS ANGELES — In a mismatch of a Sweet 16 game, the only question in Michigan’s victory over Texas A&M on Thursday night was whether the Wolverines’ offense was better than the defense, or the other way around.
In what was supposed to be a close game — the oddsmakers had Michigan as a 2½-point favorite — the Wolverines built a lead that reached 29 points late in the first half and coasted to a 99-72 victory in the West Regional semifinal.
Copyright © 2018 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
LOS ANGELES — They play grinding basketball, ugly basketball if one sees it that way. Michigan and Texas A&M haven’t been stylish in this NCAA Tournament, but they have been successful.
Thursday night at Staples Center, the two schools, better known for football perhaps — Texas A&M just hired a coach, Jimbo Fisher, for $75 million — will meet in the opening game of the West Regional Sweet 16.
Copyright © 2018 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
GLENDALE, Ariz. — The road ended here. So did the dream. So wonderful a story, the outsider, the small school with the big plan, to stand college basketball on its ear, to beat the big boys with some big men and tenacious defense.
Gonzaga, the “Zags,” as it said in white letters on their blue tops, was ahead, leading North Carolina by a point Saturday night in the NCAA basketball championship of 2017, 1 minute and 40 seconds from the win.
And then never scored again. And then thrashed and missed and fouled and fell. And just like that it seemed, so quickly, a royal coach turning into a pumpkin, a magnificent season turning into a disappointment: Carolina was a 71-65 winner.
There were the Zags, leaning on each others’ shoulders, fighting back tears, knowing the season was finished, the goal unreached. They had lost for only the second time, finished the season 37-2. But it was the wrong game to lose, the game that would have given the school the sporting respect it seeks.
For Carolina, with so much history and six national championships, there was redemption. A year ago, the Tar Heels were beaten in the NCAA final with a second to play by Villanova. This time, it was Carolina’s turn.
“One of the things we talked about,” said Roy Williams, the Carolina coach, “was whether this group was tough enough. I think they were tough enough tonight.”
Tough enough and relentless enough. Defense wins, we’re told, and defense means persistence, tenacity and resilience. Carolina shot 30 percent in the first half, 35 percent for the game. But it battered and badgered Gonzaga after intermission. The Zags shot just 27 percent in the second half.
You can’t lose if the other team doesn’t score. In the last 1:40 of the most important game in the Zags’ history, they didn’t score.
They had a turnover, missed a jumper and had a shot blocked. The one-point lead became a one-point deficit, then a three-point deficit. Then five. It was over.
Przemek Karnowski, the senior, the 7-footer from Poland, usually so capable under the basket with his twists and turns and hook shots, was a sad 1-for-8. If Carolina didn’t know how to get the ball in the basket, it did know how to keep the Zags from getting it in.
“We got good shots,” insisted Mark Few, the Zags' coach. “We had the ball where we wanted.”
Except going through the net.
“(Nigel Williams-Goss) is such a warrior. He blew his ankle and he still was able to get a shot. The kid’s just a flat-out winner, but we never would have gotten to this point without him. He’s about the only guy we could call on who’s really deliberate down the stretch there. We needed a defensive rebound after they missed on a shot that ended up bging a jump ball. That was a back-breaker.”
Gonzaga never had been this far before, never had made it to college basketball’s ultimate week, to the Final Four. So many doubts. So many questions. Still, the Zags couldn’t climb the full way.
“I think we’ll settle in here,” said Few about the Gonzaga program. "I’m hoping it will settle in and we’ll feel better tomorrow and in the days to come.
“It doesn’t feel that great right now for a couple of reasons. You’re on the brink of a national championship. You want to give that to your time. But at the same time, the thing that crushes you is you won’t get to coach these guys again.”
There will be other guys and other teams. Gonzaga can only wish for another result.
By Art Spander
GLENDALE, Ariz. — One game now. So near. So far. A place Mark Few never had been. A place Gonzaga never had been. All the hopes, the disappointments, the slights, the dreams, distilled to one game.
The Zags have left base camp. Finally. The summit looms. That they’ve made it this far is more than many believed possible. The Zags, the little school that couldn’t but this magnificent season of 2016-17 certainly proved it can.
They’re 37-1, the best record in college basketball. They beat physical South Carolina, losing a big lead but not their poise, winning 77-73 Saturday night at University of Phoenix Stadium. The school that never could get to the Final Four is now in the final one.
The win had Zags coach Mark Few, a minister’s son, doing handstands in the locker room. The win had Gonzaga, named for a 16th-century Jesuit priest who died caring for epidemic victims, moving into the big time and out of that silly designation, mid-major.
“They’re always on me to show emotion after a win,” said Few of his acrobatics. “So that’s my fairly weak effort of showing emotion. I got out of it with a healthy rotator cuff and healthy Achilles, so I think I’m in a good place.”
Gonzaga, in Spokane, Wash., alma mater of Bing Crosby, with its roster of recruits and transfers, with its stress on defense, with its critics who insist the Zags — well, the official nickname is Bulldogs — play a weak schedule, is at worst going to be the No. 2 team in the country and very well could end up as No. 1.
Gonzaga gave up a 14-point second-half lead in four minutes — or, more correctly, South Carolina overcame that lead with defense and shooting. And then the Zags suddenly were down by two, 67-65, with 7:06 to play. Then all the coaching and hustle and skill came forward, and Gonzaga regained control. Zach Collins, a 7-foot freshman, made the most unlikely of baskets for a 7-footer, a three-pointer. Winners find a way.
“Our late-game execution,” said Few. “That’s been a topic of speculation because we haven’t really had many close games. But we practiced it a lot. And I mean the guys executed it perfectly down the last four minutes. So I'm really proud of them for that. And just ecstatic — to be still playing the last game of the year is just crazy cool.”
Few is 54, and you don’t picture or hear him saying “crazy cool,” but he does. He’s been at Gonzaga 18 years. He’s been chased by larger schools — UCLA was interested at one time — but seems satisfied and rooted.
Basketball certainly isn’t football, a sport that Gonzaga, like most smaller schools in America, have dropped. Get yourself two or three excellent players, one of them specifically a point guard, and several other competent ones willing to play roles and listen to instructions, and you can win a title, no matter the total enrollment.
Nigel Williams-Goss spent two years on the other side of the Cascades, at the U. of Washington in Seattle. He left, then heard Few’s call. The man can shoot. He had 23 points Saturday night, high for the game. He also can orate.
“The journey we’ve been on has been unreal,” said Williams-Goss. “We just never stopped believing, and we’ve had the utmost confidence in ourselves the entire season.
“I guess they were saying we were the most nervous team in the tournament. And you know we heard everything all year, haven’t played tight games, were not tough enough ... No one’s here by accident. You have 37 wins in a college season, that’s unbelievable. We’re here to win it.”
Williams-Goss and Collins are roommates. “He told me,” Williams-Goss said of Collins, the freshman from Las Vegas, “he wouldn’t want to be playing against (himself) today. And coach says all year we just can’t talk the talk, we gotta walk the walk.”
Hard to say about walking, but Collins made that go-ahead three-pointer, had six blocks and ended up with 14 points and 13 rebounds.
“He loves being part of the team,” Few said of Collins. “We trust him at the end of the game.”
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
SAN JOSE, Calif. — All the years. And for Gonzaga the tears. “Tears of joy,” from Mark Few after at last making it to basketball’s promised land, the Final Four.
Gonzaga, named for a saint, Aloysius Gonzaga, nicknamed the Bulldogs but known as the “Zags,” had qualified for the NCAA basketball tournament 19 previous times and never got past the regionals. Until Saturday.
Copyright © 2017 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jordan Mathews, a graduate transfer from Cal who went to summer school with the hope of playing in the NCAA championship game, kept that dream alive Thursday night for himself and Gonzaga.
With the top-seeded Zags trailing fourth-seeded West Virginia, Mathews connected on a wide-open three-pointer from the left wing with 57 seconds left to give Gonzaga the lead for good in a 61-58 win.
Copyright © 2017 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
ATLANTA – Sometimes it works out like this. Sometimes the biggest game of the season turns out to be the best game of the season, a game of emotion, drama and subplots that validates our love of sports, a game that, true to the mottos printed on the warmups of both teams, did rise to the occasion.
The preludes, the regionals, even the semifinals, were hesitant, awkward games, making us wonder what was wrong, instead of what was right, games when players couldn’t score, games that elicited criticism instead of the expected praise.
But on Monday night, the NCAA final swept away all the disappointment that had gone before, as Louisville, once trailing by 12 points, was able to sweep away Michigan, 82-76, and both take the championship and justify its overall No. 1 seeding.
It was a beautiful day for Rick Pitino, the Louisville coach, who in the late morning was chosen for the Basketball Hall of Fame and then so very late in the evening, just before the stroke of midnight because these games are staged for a maximum TV audience, watched and urged the Cardinals to their third title – and his second.
Thirteen years ago, at the only other school that counts in the state of bluegrass, thoroughbreds and college basketball, the U. of Kentucky, Pitino earned his other championship.
So Louisville, which at one time in the first half had trailed by 12, would come out ahead in the end, but the true winner was the sport, as wild and enthralling as only could be imagined by the record finals crowd of 74,326 at the Georgia Dome and the usual millions of television viewers.
“A lot of times when you get to championship games,” said Pitino, “the games are not always great, not always pretty. This was a great game.”
This was a game in which a kid nicknamed Spike, Michael Albrecht, a 5-foot-10 freshman, came off the bench for Michigan to score 17 points before intermission and then, as the media wondered if he were the stuff of fairy tales, slipped into oblivion.
This was the game in which a backup named Luke Hancock took the role of the injured Kevin Ware and not only led Louisville with 22 points but was chosen the Final Four’s most outstanding player.
This was the game in which players from both squads raced from one end of the court to the other at the sort of breakneck pace that had the screaming fans -- and oh, were they loud -- taking as many deep breaths as the athletes.
Michigan (31-8) was doing it for a while with four freshmen, and oh, are the Wolverines going to be strong in the future. Louisville (35-5) was doing it for a while figuratively without guard Russ Smith, who made only 3 of his 16 field goal attempts.
Yes, Ware was in the building, on the bench, the right leg in which he incurred a compound fracture 10 days earlier against Duke under sweat pants, his number “5” on the T-shirts of so many Louisville fans. He was given the opportunity to make the final snip, separating the net from the rim.
Louisville was not quite as ecstatic as it was relieved. The Cardinals gained control in the second half, as they did against Wichita State in the semifinal, but Michigan, shooting 52 percent for the game, wouldn’t fade until the bitter end.
“As fine an offensive team as there is,” Pitino said of Michigan.
The Wolverines with their happy ghosts from the past, Chris Webber, Jalen Rose and others from, the ’93 Michigan finalists in attendance, would get 24 points from the new Player of the Year, Trey Burke – even with Burke out most of the first half with two early fouls.
That’s when Albrecht came in and came on, making 6 of 8 and getting his 17. That’s when Michigan zoomed to a 33-21 lead with 3:56 to play before halftime. But even more quickly, in three and half minutes, Louisville did its own zooming, and went ahead, 37-36. You sensed it had become the Cardinals' game.
“We feel bad about it,” Michigan coach John Beilein would say in retrospect. “We could have done some things better, every one of us. At the same time, Louisville is a terrific basketball team. I have not seen that quickness anywhere, and we played some really good teams. That quickness is incredible, and it got us a couple of times today.”
It got Louisville the victory, as one of Pitino’s horses, Goldencents, on Saturday got him the Santa Anita Derby victory.
“I think when you work as hard as we work,” said Pitino of his team, “it builds a foundation of love and discipline because you have to suffer together. You're always pressing.”
He meant for greatness. In this game, this great game, Louisville achieved it.
By Art Spander
ATLANTA -- The fans of the school that didn’t win, Wichita State, were complaining, not about their team, which was magnificent, but about the college basketball rule that awards alternate possessions on what used to be jump balls and, of course, about the officiating.
What happened was Louisville -- which was down 12 in the second half and came rushing back to win the NCAA national semifinal, 72-68, Saturday night, and advance to Monday night’s final against Michigan -- missed a free throw with nine seconds to play.
Wichita’s Ron Baker grabbed the ball, then Louisville’s Luke Hancock also grabbed the ball, although the Wichita people among the huge crowd at the Georgia Dome insisted Hancock grabbed Baker, getting away with a foul that became a tie-up.
The possession arrow pointed to Louisville, and naturally Wichita had to foul intentionally. And that was that, the No. 1 seed beating the No. 9 seed.
But forget the rules and the refs. If you’re in front, 47-35, with under 14 minutes remaining, they’re not at fault. Your team is.
Your team, which was so protective of the ball for more than 30 minutes, which had only four turnovers, wilted under Louisville's pressure and made six turnovers in eight possessions. Your team, which got this far on 3-point baskets hit on only 6 in 20 attempts.
Louisville won because when its starters were less than effective, its reserves -- including a walk-on, Tim Henderson -- were very effective. Louisville won because it’s the best team in the country.
“They do that to everyone,” a saddened Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall said of Louisville.
Then he sighed, “This may be the most important basketball game I’ll ever coach. It’s definitely the most important Wichita State has played in.”
It was no less important for Louisville, which certainly was without its emotional leader, Kevin Ware, who broke his leg in last weekend’s regional final against Duke. Louisville has made even greater comebacks – it was down 16 to Syracuse in the Big East tournament – to advance as it has.
“We had to win this game with our second unit,” said Rick Pitino, the Louisville coach, “with Steven Van Treese, Tim Henderson, one of the best sixth men in basketball, Luke Hancock, and Montrezl Harrell. Our starters played poorly, and that was because Wichita State is that good.”
If not quite good enough.
Henderson is one of those hometown kids who sat on the bench while Peyton Siva from Seattle, Russ Smith from Brooklyn, Gorgui Deng from Senegal – and definitely Ware, from the Bronx – got the playing time and accolades.
Hancock also is a sub, if one who Saturday night, basically taking Ware’s place, was on the court 31 minutes and scored 20, one point fewer than Smith.
Great teams, or at least very good teams, are deep teams, with players who perform when nobody except their teammates expects them to. Very good teams have players such as Henderson, who defied the Wichita State defense, if not logic.
All season, in the 25 games he played, Henderson had made just four 3-pointers, In this game, an agonizingly awful one in the first half and frantically exciting one in the second half, Henderson made consecutive 3-pointers. At the most critical of moments.
With Wichita ahead by those 12 points, Henderson cut the margin to nine at the 13-minute mark. Then he trimmed it to six, 47-41, with 12:18 to play.
“Tim hits shots like that in practice,” said Hancock.
This wasn’t practice. This was near perfection. Three 3-pointers in 17 attempts in 25 games. Two in three attempts in the national semifinal game.
“I think the two Henderson hit,” said Marshall, the Wichita coach, “were in concert with the two one-and-ones (the Shockers') Ehimen Okupe missed. You got to get some points there. Then the six-point run for them becomes three or four points.”
A week ago, when Ware went down with that gruesome fractured leg, the Louisville Cardinals prayed for him. On Monday night, Ware said he prayed for Hancock. “We’d love for him to be out there,” Hancock said of the injured teammate. “He’s out there in spirit. It means a lot.”
What meant a lot was for a dog of a game, Wichita leading at half by the ridiculous score of 26-25, to awaken after intermission and make the final totals respectable. More than respectable were the turnover numbers. Louisville had only two in the second half, nine for the game, Wichita just four in the first half and 11 for the game.
In domes, the shooting invariably is off -- although Siva, who was 1 for 9, was asked if the depth perception affected his jumpers and cracked, “Well, my layups. I couldn’t really see. I was too far away from the basket.”
No laughs, just the realization he’s close to the national title.