Cold Curry

Stephen Curry was the story of the 2008 NCAA Division 1 Men's Championship.

The leading scorer of the Davidson Wildcats, Curry had scored 30 points a game in the first 3 rounds. Teams that figured out how to contain him in the first half often found him tough to contain in the second half.

Surprisingly, the defense, often little spoken about, kept Davidson close against Kansas. Kansas was harassed and hurried leading to turnovers. Davidson didn't take particular advantage of the turnovers.

The game was only 3 points difference at halftime, and Curry, for once, had scored a decent 15 points in the first half. But those expecting Curry to score prodigiously in the second half were let down. Curry's final stats were 9 for 25. He had perhaps 3 shots at the end of the game where he had good looks to make a 3. Had he knocked these down, Davidson would have had an easy victory over Kansas.

Instead, after being hurried, Curry seemed tired, and the slightest bit off. Shots that had been finding net were now clanging iron. Were it not for Bryant Barr's timely 3-pointers in the second half (he scored 3), Davidson would have been in serious trouble. Indeed, after being the hot hand, Barr didn't much see the ball again in the second half, as the team decided to put its fate in Curry's hands.

In the last few seconds, down 2 points, Davidson managed to get Kansas into a shot clock violation, and had more than 10 seconds to work with. As Curry brought the ball down, Kansas decided that they would let anyone else but Curry beat them. With two guys on Curry, Curry hesitated, wondering if he should take an impossible shot, or pass it off to a teammate, making him make a deep shot. He opted for the second, and the shot missed just barely left of iron.

In the end, Davidson played Kansas that close, and the horse they rode on, Stephen Curry, was finally contained, unable to put up a little more magic in the closing minutes, and letting Kansas wriggle free, using its trio of big men to score points in the paint.

And so this means the rare occasion of four number 1 seeds are now in the final four. Kansas, North Carolina, UCLA, and Memphis. One of these powerhouses is looking to finish off its season in style.

But it was Davidson, that is this year's star.

David and Goliath

Maryland knew something about Davidson.

Three of the four years, Maryland has made an unceremonious trip to the NIT. Two years, it was dealing with the diva, John Gilchrist, and the turmoil between coach and point guard lead to an underachieving team. Last year, however, Maryland managed to string enough wins together to make the NCAA tournament, where it faced a mid-major team in Davidson.

Davidson's star player was Stephen Curry, son of Dell Curry, a former NBA player. Too short and slight to be considered by most major programs, Stephen decided to take his prodigious talent to this small school.

While Maryland won that game, it did not lead to a better season. Maryland limped to the end of the season, with loss after loss, following a familiar pattern of taking a big lead, before going cold, and losing at the end.

Davidson, on the other hand, rode the hot shooting of Stephen Curry, who seems like this generation's Reggie Miller. Give the man a little sliver of space, and he'll sink 3 pointers with ease. He's not scared to drive to the bucket either.

With so much talent already drifted to the NBA, many college players lack the kind of consistency to hit long shots. So many teams rely on a stout defense to cover those nights where they can't score that much, due to lack of superior talent.

Davidson started off challenging the original mid-major, Gonzaga, which has yet to reach the dizzying heights from ten-fifteen years ago. These days, Gonzaga struggles to get out of the second round. Davidson had the country's long win streak, at 22 games. And often, a huge win streak leads to a lot of confidence, heading into tournament time.

Although Gonzaga was the higher seed, Curry had too much for them. Most people felt, for certain, that Georgetown, with its Big East pedigree, its son of the famous coach, its Princeton-style offense, would end the Cinderella story for Davidson. Despite a huge lead, Davidson managed to come back and beat Georgetown at the end, as Georgetown whined about the fans that were more for Davidson than Georgetown.

Davidson could perhaps not wish for a better opponent that Wisconsin. Not blessed with a tremendous amount of talent, Wisconsin plays tenacious defense, and tries to keep the score down. This is the kind of team which Davidson could beat, provided Curry could get some good looks.

And, boy did he. Scoring 33 points, Davidson took a game that was touch and go for most of the first half and early into the second half, and stretched the lead to 10 points, and even close to 20 points.

They won 73-56, and now await the winner of Kansas and Villanova. Kansas has looked as dominant as it has in recent years, and many people think they have a clear road to the final four.

Is this the year of Stephen Curry? The year of Davidson? The year of the dominant mid-major thumbing their finger at the selection committee?

Curry's become the poster boy of the 2008 NCAA men's division 1 basketball tournament, and we are all merely witnesses.

(EDIT: I had made the comment from a Nike ad about Lebron James "we are all witnesses". They kept focusing on this guy in the audience, who I thought was Stephen Curry's dad, who looked awfully young. Turns it out wasn't Dell Curry at all, but one Lebron James, who had taken a break to catch this potential star of the future. True, Lebron has intimidating size and talent to match, where Curry is slight of frame--but wasn't Reggie Miller similarly slight? So I found it more amusing that it was indeed Lebron watching, and that he too, was a witness).

Madness

March madness leads to office pools.

Even non sports-fans can get into March madness. And they can win! Why is that? Why can non-experts win?

The problem is this. The committee that seeds the tournament are already experts. They rank each group of 16 from 1 to 16, with 1 being the team that has performed the best and is perceived the best.

So, given a lack of information, a non sports-fan can simply pick the higher seed each time.

But if you want to be an expert, you want to show how smart you are. This means you need to pick upsets. But I have no more sensible ways of picking an upset than a combination of superstition and intuition. The more upsets I pick, the more likely I pick the wrong one. And picking the wrong one can be like a double whammy. I can fail to pick an upset, and pick an upset when none occurred.

I had thought, just on raw intuition, that Siena might win its game over Vanderbilt. But I really had no good reason to pick the 13th seed over the 4th. So I didn't. Yet, Siena won.

UConn losing? UConn is a traditional powerhouse. I picked wrong again. Now, I could have paid more attention to location of the tournament, trying to figure out who played at home. That is a somewhat reasonable way to pick upsets.

The really tough way to pick upsets is to analyze 64 teams. Who has great guard play? Who has decent speed? Who has good interior play?

Well, I haven't seen many of these games, so I am literally guessing, and guessing against the committee.

And yet, I feel so guilty picking the favorites, which requires no effort at all. I'd rather pick upsets. Well, at least, early on. I, being a chicken, pick the favorites to go really deep, because history says this will happen, and because who knows which upset to pick. There are literally dozens of choices.

OK, we know that George Mason was a really long shot two years ago, and few would sensibly pick them over anyone else. But think about Florida. Who would have picked Florida that year either?

My brackets are a mess, at least, in the first round, and yet, there's an outside chance that if my main pick does well, I could still win it all.

In that respect, a good game lets you do badly at the start, with a chance at the end. And that's as much as you can ask for.

Every Year, The Same

Selection Sunday was 6 PM EDT. As usual, people always, always complain about teams that were left out. This year, the complaint was with Arizona State getting left out. They had a better record than Arizona, and beat Arizona twice. They also lost to teams they shouldn't have.

Why do these pundits care so much about how a team is doing in the middle of the conference? Perhaps they really should have 128 teams, as Bobby Knight suggested. They know ASU and Arizona, but some team like Southern Alabama, they've never heard of, so they have a passion for a fifth or sixth ranked team to make the tournament. Why do they care? Neither ASU or Arizona are going to win, or get close enough that it will matter.

Every year, there's always some team left out. Would 128 teams solve the problem? Partly, yes. The teams left out would be SO insignificant, that they wouldn't defend the tenth team in a conference, right? Of course, if they did it Bobby Knight's way, then maybe Ivy League teams wouldn't make it in.

And, is it even possible to figure out a top 128 teams? The experts know the next, 10-15 teams to add, but another fifty teams? At that point, the differences seem kinda trivial. And how do you properly seed them?

At 65 teams, and really, 34 at-large teams, it gives pundits enough to complain about each year. I would love for them to put John Feinstein on the ESPN show if, for no other reason, to have a dissenting voice, someone who would support the smaller conferences, who would say yea to the Patriot League champ. ESPN's whole crew favors the big conferences, and they seem to worry about the major conferences getting 6 or 7 teams in.

Besides, if they ever let 128 teams in, what would these guys ever complain about?

Pearls of Wisdom

Bruce Pearl's journey, as many coaches' journeys, has been a long one. He was an assistant coach in Iowa, a head coach in Division 2 at the University of South Indiana for ten years, where he made the finals of the Division 2 championships twice, before winning it in 1995. He stayed there several years more, before going to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a Division 1 team, in 2001.

The Division 1 NCAA men's basketball tournament, often compared to a "dance", serves as an ad-hoc tryout for many a coach looking to move from the small programs and up to bigger programs. Among the coaches that have made this move are Bruce Weber at Southern Illinois, who became Illinois' head coach, and Stan Heath, former head coach of Kent State, who went on to become Arkansas' head coach (he's since been replaced).

Bruce Pearl had taken UWM to the Sweet 16, and that lead him to become the head coach at the University of Tennessee. UT has always been a football school. What basketball fame it had, it had in women's basketball where Pat Summitt has been the winningest coach in women's college basketball (her number exceeds Division 1 coaches as well). While she has been asked to coach in the WNBA, she has stayed steadfast at Tennessee.

While UT has had reasonable seasons in the past, teams that have made their way to the tournament, most coaches have stayed no more than 5 years before being replaced. The last UT coach was Buzz Peterson who used to play at UNC. Surely, someone hoped that UNC magic would rub off. That didn't happen. Pearl's selection was seen more of hiring an up-and-coming coach (one often has to spend 10-15 years coaching to get that title), and no one knew how things would turn out.

His first year, players wanted to defect and play for other teams. Pearl allowed these players to leave Tennessee, sensing that a harsh hand would lead to bad feelings. He still did quite well in his first year with 22 wins and 8 losses, impressive considering it was his first year (historically, he's done very well on the start).

What's impressed most people is Pearl's outsized personality. Showing his support for the women's game, he decided (with some players) to have his chest painted with "V" (the other players were in "O", "L", "S", spelling "Vols", the shortened name for "Volunteers"). In response, Summitt returned the favor, by dressing as a cheerleader at a key game between Tennessee and Florida, a game which Tennessee won.

Saturday night pitted UT against Memphis. Memphis was undefeated, with a 25-0 record, and poor free throw shooting. Memphis's coach was one John Calipari, who has been a top basketball coach for ages. UT, with 2 losses, was number 2 in the nation. This isn't the usual number 1, number 2 matchup, which usually pits UNC against Duke.

Pearl, the consummate showman, dressed in an orange blazer, decided to host a pep rally for UT fans who made the cross-state trip, and said UT was ready to take the number 1 rankings. After leading for much of the second half, Memphis came back to take a lead, and with under a minute left, it seemed Memphis might be able to secure the win, and stay undefeated, but due to some bad shots at the end, and poor free throw shooting, UT managed to win 66-62, and will undoubtedly become number 1 in the country, having knocked out the number 1, and being number 2.

This will be the first time UT has been ranked number 1 in men's basketball, and Pearl, much like George Mason's head coach, Jim Larranaga, wants to take advantage of the spotlight. Pearl projects a certain lovable goofiness as head coach, making him seem like one friendly guy, a contrast to, say, Bobby Knight, who recently stepped down as head coach of Texas Tech so his son could take over.

You've got to hand it to Pearl to be able to get this team to where it is in such short order. Alas, coaching is also about recruiting (and recruiting made news as Kelvin Sampson, head coach at Indiana, stepped down for recruiting violations at Indiana of a similar nature to the one's he had had at Oklahoma), so we'll see how he does with his own recruiting. Often, "bad" coaches actually do a pretty good job at recruiting, often suffering when they have to coach. Better coaches can often do well with good players, but struggle to recruit the players they need.

With only a few games left in the season, UT is poised for its first number 1 seed at the men's tournament. UT may remain devout to its men's football program, but Pearl may start to make hoops fans out of the Vols.

Followup: Lebron

Given Lebron's 48 points in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals, which lead Cleveland to a 3-2 lead, with one more win to take them to the Finals, Detroit's plan was simple. Stop Lebron. Double-team him. Triple-team him. Usually, if there's no other good player on the team, you can stop one team's best player.

Normally, a guy like Larry Hughes would be the number two choice. Or maybe Ilgauskas? The names don't roll off the tongue. These aren't the Celtics of the 80s, nor the Lakers of the 80s. It's not the bad boys of Detroit from the late 80s. Even the Spurs, now the odds-on favorites to win, have at least three weapons in Duncan, Ginobli, and Parker.

But the guy who came though in Game 4, when Hughes was hurt, one Daniel Gibson, nicknamed Boobie, who had a 21 point outburst, topped himself, when Detroit made it their mission to shut down King James.

Gibson poured in 31 points, on a night when James was held to 20 points. And it wasn't a Iverson-like 31 points where he misses more shots than he made. Boobie was in the zone, eerily efficient in his scoring. 12 of 15 free throws. 5 of 5 on three point shots. 7 of 9 field goals made. When making 50% of your shots is a pretty efficient night, Gibson was stratospheric, making 70% of his shots.

Lebron knew that Detroit would try to shut him down, and looked to Gibson to bail him out. He told him to have no fear, to take the shots when he had them. Lebron had been mentoring Gibson this season, and his faith paid off in Lebron's first trip to the finals. The NBA, fearing the blah Pistons and against the blah Spurs, were understandably relieved when Cleveland made it through. Flip Saunders now has to fear for his job, a guy who has his team play great in the regular season, but unable to take the step that Larry Brown did, that is, giving the Pistons the title.

Instead, King James and, as importantly, Boobie Gibson, have put the Cavaliers in the finals. No one expects the Cavaliers to put up much of a fight to the Spurs. The Spurs have so many weapons and play suffocating defense. The Cavaliers, one might say, is just Lebron James. But maybe no longer.

Stockton and Malone. Jordan and Pippen. Shaq and Kobe. Is it time for Lebron and Gibson? Will we look back years from now and say it wasn't Lebron that was the real steal, but Gibson?