The quest to open eyes of NCAA suits about their short-sighted views and mistaken opinions when it comes to staging championship play in Las Vegas doesn’t soon appear to be changing.
Basketball
Connecticut is a national champion for the fourth time because when it comes to the final of each season, this almost always holds up: The side that executes those things thought inessential during a season is the one cutting down nets at its end.
When the Wildcats of Kentucky start a lineup of all freshmen against Connecticut in tonight’s national championship game at AT&T Stadium, it will be the first time in a final since the Fab Five of Michigan did so in losing to Duke in 1992.
ARLINGTON, Texas
This is the new normal. The way college basketball will look more often than not each March.
Three years ago, Connecticut won the national championship. Shabazz Napier was a freshman on that team. So too was Roscoe Smith.
Cinderella stayed home. Forget that Kentucky is an 8 seed and Connecticut a 7. Of those teams that have advanced to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament, all are major programs and three have won multiple national championships.
The final nail was pounded into the coffin as most assumed it would be all season. Thirty-six games later, San Diego State couldn’t overcome its offensive woes against an elite opponent.
Think about evolution. It’s a pretty broad term. It can refer to a variety of changes, to the uplifting of mountains and the wandering of riverbeds and the creation of a new species. To how Bo Ryan coaches basketball.
When it plays like this, scoring in transition, defending with size and length and purpose in the half court, making open shots out of set plays, forcing turnovers, having its way at both ends over 40 minutes, Arizona offers a basketball team that is nearly impossible to beat.
It’s a common reaction: One of the best players on one of the nation’s best college basketball teams is lost for the season due to injury and his teammates begin pressing.
Jacob Parker is what you might expect from a Cinderella story in the NCAA Tournament, a free spirit who happens to be the leading scorer on a team that has won 29 straight games and last lost Nov. 23.
This is a truth that March bears: That no matter how celebrated a college basketball player might be, no matter the hype surrounding his game, no matter projections of an NBA lottery pick, nothing is given when the NCAA Tournament arrives.
There wasn’t enough twine in California and all neighboring states to save Steve Alford during his first news conference for the college basketball coaching job no one can ever succeed at to the level it once knew.
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