CBS giving us a good dose of the past when we need it most. #MarchVegas #MarchMadness #LasVegas
By Matt Bonesteel
March 20, 2020 at 6:07 a.m. PDT
If things hadn’t gone completely haywire over the past couple of weeks, we would be hearing this song over and over and over again right about now and wouldn’t have minded it one bit: Read more…
#MARCHVEGAS2020 #coronavirusbraketkiller
by EDDIE PELLS
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Coaches and players left them. Others told them to go away.
The guys who stuck around at UConn ended up with the last laugh and a pretty good prize to go with it: The national title.
Shabazz Napier turned in another all-court masterpiece Monday night to lift the Huskies to a 60-54 win over Kentucky’s freshmen and bring home a championship hardly anyone saw coming.
“You’re looking at the hungry Huskies,” Napier told the crowd and TV audience as confetti rained down. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when you banned us.”
The senior guard had 22 points, six rebounds and three assists, and his partner in defensive lock-down, Ryan Boatright, finished with 14 points.
The victory comes only a short year after the Huskies were barred from March Madness because of grades problems. That stoked a fire no one could put out in 2014.
Napier kneeled down and put his forehead to the court for a long while after the buzzer sounded. He was wiping back tears when he cut down the net.
“I see my guys enjoying it,” Napier said. “That’s the most special feeling ever.”
UConn (32-8) never trailed in the final. The Huskies led by as many as 15 in the first half and watched the Wildcats (29-11) trim the deficit to one with 8:13 left. But Aaron Harrison, who pulled out wins with clutch 3-pointers in Kentucky’s last three games, missed a 3 from the left corner that would’ve given the Cats the lead. Kentucky never got that close again.
One key difference in a six-point loss: Kentucky’s 11 missed free throws — a flashback of sorts for coach John Calipari, whose Memphis team blew a late lead against Kansas after missing multiple free throws in the 2008 final. The Wildcats went 13 for 24. UConn went 10 for 10, including Lasan Kromah’s two to seal the game with 25.1 seconds left.
“We had our chances to win,” Calipari said. “We’re missing shots, we’re missing free throws. We just didn’t have enough.”
Calipari said he decided not to foul at the end “because they’re not missing.”
In all, Calipari’s One and Doners got outdone by a more fundamentally sound, more-seasoned group that came into this tournament a seventh-seeded afterthought but walked away with the program’s fourth national title since 1999. They were the highest seed to win it all since Rollie Massimino’s eighth-seeded Villanova squad in 1985.
Napier and Boatright now go down with Kemba Walker, Emeka Okafor, Rip Hamilton, Ray Allen and all those other UConn greats. This adds to the school’s titles in 1999, 2004 and 2011.
“When they say Ray, Rip, Ben, Emeka, Kemba — they’ll soon say Shabazz,” said their former coach, Jim Calhoun, who was in the crowd along with former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and a father-and-son team whose dance to the “Happy” song got huge applause when played on the big screen at AT&T Stadium.
The crowd was cheering for UConn at the end.
A short year ago, the Huskies were preparing for their first season in the new American Athletic Conference after being booted from the Big East and not welcomed by any of the so-called power conferences. Calhoun, who built the program, left because of health problems. And most damaging — the NCAA ban triggered an exodus of five key players to the NBA or other schools.
Napier stuck around. So did Boatright. And Calhoun’s replacement, Kevin Ollie, figured out how to make their grit, court sense and loyalty pay off.
“It’s not about going to the next level, it’s not about going to the pros, but playing for your university, playing for your teammates,” Niels Giffey said. “And I’m so proud of all the guys on this team that stuck with this team.”
They were one step ahead of Kentucky all night, holding off furious rally after furious rally.
Kentucky’s biggest push started when James Young (20 points, seven rebounds) posterized Amida Brimah with a monster dunk to start a three-point play and trigger an 8-0 run.
In the middle of that, Boatright, who shut down Harrison’s twin brother, Andrew, most of the night, twisted his left ankle while receiving an innocuous-looking pass from Napier. He called a timeout. Got it worked on and came back out.
“I’ve got a lot of heart and I wasn’t coming out,” Boatright said. “We put in too much work all year for me to give up on an ankle sprain.”
Napier and Giffey made 3s on UConn’s two possessions after the timeout, and that one-point lead was back up to five — fairly comfortable by this tight, taut, buzzer-beating tournament’s standards.
The big question in Kentucky is what will happen to all those freshmen. Julius Randle (10 points, six rebounds) is a lottery pick if he leaves for the NBA. Young and the Harrison brothers could be first-rounders. The big question is whether they’ll want to leave on this note.
“I think all these kids are coming back, so I think we should be good,” Calipari deadpanned, getting big laughs.
He called his group the most coachable bunch he’s ever had. They were preseason No. 1, a huge disappointment through much of this season. They were seeded an uninspiring eighth for the tournament and came on strong in time for a run to the final.
But they got outdone by a team on a different sort of mission — a team led by Napier, who stuck with the program even though he knew the 2012-13 season was for nothing but fun.
But what fun 2013-14 turned out to be.
Napier was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player and he earned it on both ends of the court, keeping a hand in Aaron Harrison’s face most of the night and holding him to a 3-for-7, seven-point, no-damage night.
He could also shoot it a bit — including a 3-pointer in the first half when UConn was having trouble dissecting the Kentucky zone. The shot came from about 30 feet, right in front of the edge of the Final Four logo at Center Court, or, as Dick Vitale put it: “He shot that one from Fort Worth.”
They felt it back in Storrs, where they could be celebrating another title shortly. The UConn women play for the national title Tuesday.
If they win, it will be the first sweep of the titles since 2004. The last school to do it: UConn, of course.
For more….
By Jimmy Burch
ARLINGTON — Based on program pedigrees, college basketball historians would not be surprised by a Kentucky-Connecticut matchup in an NCAA title game in a typical season.
But this is 2014, a season far from typical for two programs that have combined to win 11 national championships.
Kentucky (29-10), the No. 8 seed in the Midwest Region, dropped a regular-season game to South Carolina (14-20), which finished 13th in the 14-member SEC. UConn (31-8), the No. 7 seed in the East Region, lost both of its regular-season meetings to SMU, an NIT participant, and also fell to Houston (17-16), which did not play in any postseason tournament.
Yet the two power programs meet at 8:10 Monday night, warts and all, for the right to cut down the nets in AT&T Stadium and be recognized as the NCAA national champion. For the foreseeable future, Kentucky (29-10) and UConn (31-8) will be the answer to a trivia question that might stump lots of college basketball fans:
Which teams were the longest long shots, based on tournament seeds, to meet in an NCAA championship game?
The Wildcats and Huskies, with a combined seed total of 15, have played their way into that distinction. UConn is the first No. 7 seed to play for an NCAA title since the seeding process began with the 1979 tournament. Kentucky can join Villanova, the 1985 champion, as the only No. 8 seeds to win a championship. No team seeded higher than Villanova has won an NCAA title.
How surprising is this title-game matchup of power programs experiencing also-ran seasons before catching fire in March Madness? Consider: Among the 11.01 million brackets in ESPN’s tournament challenge, only .00016 of 1 percent (1,780) had Kentucky facing UConn in the title game.
According to Las Vegas oddsmakers, Kentucky began the tournament with 40-1 odds to cut down the nets at AT&T Stadium, the same venue where the Wildcats fell to Baylor 67-62 in a Dec. 6 contest. UConn was given 100-1 odds.
Yet both schools arrive with a 50-50 shot to collect another national title. Kentucky has won eight. UConn has won three. That is quite a twist from last season, when neither school made the NCAA’s 68-team bracket.
Kentucky coach John Calipari spent Sunday downplaying the significance of the less-than-stellar seeds that have served to motivate players on both teams.
“After your first game, even if you’re highly seeded, every other game’s hard in this tournament,” said Calipari, who stressed that both schools were undervalued by members of the NCAA selection committee. “I don’t think we were an eighth seed. I don’t think Connecticut was a seven seed. But that’s where they seeded us.”
Because of that starting point, Calipari said both schools “had one more hard game than some of the other teams had” in advancing through the tournament bracket. But both teams have thrived while setting a precedent unseen in this tournament in 38 years. Monday’s matchup marks the first time since 1966 that two teams will play for an NCAA title after both failed to make the tournament the previous season.
The opportunity intrigues UConn guard Shabazz Napier, one of three seniors who were part of the program when the Huskies won the 2011 national title.
“We all play the game of basketball to compete against the best. This is one of them games,” Napier said. “We put our jerseys on the same way they do. We all believe.”
Both teams have history on their side. UConn is 3-0 in NCAA championship games, including title-clinching triumphs in Houston (2011) and San Antonio (2004). The Huskies could complete a Texas Trifecta with a victory in Arlington.
Kentucky, 8-3 in NCAA championship games, has a Texas Trio working in its favor. Three of the Wildcats’ five freshmen starters played high school basketball in the Lone Star State (forward Julius Randle, guards Aaron and Andrew Harrison). Randle, a Dallas native, called it “just amazing” to have an opportunity to claim an NCAA title in front of family and friends in his home state.
“To be here and playing on the final day means a lot,” Randle said. “If we are the champions, it will be because we did it together, played hard and trusted each other.”
A Kentucky triumph also would underscore the surprise nature of this title run. An NCAA champion must win six consecutive tournament games. Kentucky’s longest winning streak this season is five. But that streak is active. So, too, is the hunger of UConn’s seniors to bookend their college careers with another NCAA title in Texas.
“We certainly have much more experience on this team,” forward Niels Giffey said, comparing the current Huskies to the 2011 title team. “We have good team chemistry. This whole group has been through so many down periods that I think we really worked hard for this.”
In Monday’s title game, only one thing is certain. A team that has experienced its share of down moments will enjoy college basketball’s ultimate high: cutting the nets as a national champion.
by Chris Dufresne
The road to Final Four was pockmarked with controversial calls and video reviews. But in the end, Florida vs. UConn and Kentucky vs. Wisconsin feels right.
Three referees and a technician huddled at the scorer’s table late Sunday afternoon and determined, after a lengthy review, that next week’s Final Four in North Texas was set.
Utilizing information culled from hundreds of cameras set up at games around the country over two weeks, the NCAA confirmed the schools moving on as Florida, Connecticut, Wisconsin and Kentucky.
The NCAA also announced the MVEI (most valuable electronic instrument) of the Elite Eight was the replay monitor.
Somehow, though, it all worked out . . . sensationally.
The officials got out of the way long enough to allow enough scintillating action to permeate down to the stars who did not wear stripes.
No botched “block-charge” call or 18-minute final minutes (Tennessee vs. Michigan) could keep the college kids from doing what they do best every March.
And that is to provide unscripted and unparalleled drama.
Kentucky earned the last Final Four prize Sunday when freshman Aaron Harrison hit a three-pointer with 2.3 seconds left in Indianapolis to lift the Wildcats to a 75-72 win over Michigan.
That followed Connecticut’s knockout win over Michigan State (Sorry, Mr. President) in New York’s Madison Square Garden.
A day earlier, in Memphis, Florida outlasted die-hard Dayton and Wisconsin edged Arizona in Anaheim overtime.
From sunup Tuesday on the first day of the tournament, to sundown Sunday 12 days later, there were seven overtime games played and 10 other games decided by three points or fewer.
Warren Buffett played us all for suckers, knowing there was no chance he would have to pay anyone a billion bucks for a perfect bracket.
Whatever you thought of the NCAA committee’s seeding two weeks ago, these Final Four pairings will go well with almost any wine.
In one national semifinal, top-seeded Florida plays Connecticut, a No. 7, while in the other, No. 2 Wisconsin meets No. 8 Kentucky.
There are enough angles to convene a geometry convention.
Four Florida seniors, who fell one game short of the Final Four the three previous seasons, finally came to a place of peace after the Dayton accords.
The Gators are back in the last weekend or the first time since 2007, when they won their second straight national title under Coach Billy Donovan.
Florida was happy to cut down the nets in Memphis, but that isn’t the endgame.
“Our goal at the beginning of the year wasn’t to be the South Regional champions,” senior forward Patric Young said. “Our goal was to be national champions.”
As Young climbed the ladder Saturday to take net snippets, he said, he was “thinking about how I wanted to be able to do this again.”