We are live from the living room with a Final Four blog event….
The opening montage - and yes, I forced myself to watch it for you, the home viewer - was relatively inoffensive as such things go. Sorry Mitch Albom, but it seems that Kid Rock is Detroit’s unofficial spokesman.
Yeah, I’m even watching commercials. Is anyone buying these John Deere ads that make getting a lawnmower seem like finding a Porsche in the driveway with Heidi Klum in the front seat?
Before we get started, here’s a bracket-format tweak from the fine folks at the Onion. I don’t need to tell you what online colleges and cosmetics schools in the Dance would do for the Neilsens.
What should make game one cool is the vibe in the building. Michigan State is cuddly. UConn is Darth Vader.
6:10- tipoff
6:13 - Lucas, the Spartans’ point guard, looks like a man on a mission. What I like about MSU is how they run plays, dozens of them, in an NBA style. That’s all Tom Izzo, who might be the best coach in this sport.
6:27 - UConn has gone from down seven to a 19-16 lead. The Huskies lack bounce a little, sometimes, and the freshman Kemba Walker seems to have given them the jolt they needed.
Commercial theme- A litany of zero percent financing…. cash back incentives…. no money down, no payments for a year… welcome to the recession economy.
It’s a small thing, but I absolutely hate it when the floor’s above the level of the benches. Sort of disconnects the team on the floor and the coach from the bench, and might even be a little dangerous. Basketball benches shouldn’t be dugouts. Can’t imagine why that’s necessary, much less desirable. Reminds me of when McCaskey used to play on an auditorium stage many moons ago…
6:36 - We’re 11 minutes in, and Izzo has already used 11 people…
Who knew Miller Lite added hops at three different points in the brewing process? I’m a changed man, and I’m going to have to rethink some things…
6:43- Sparty just ran a sweet pick-and-roll to get Thabeet away from the basket and get a layup to tie it. I swear there’s been more offensive rebounds than defensive so far. It’s a pretty even game, but MSU is taking the fight to ‘em, just slightly…
Clark Kellogg has been OK so far, but he’s getting into his way-too-amused-by-barely-funny-things mode. Not a fan….
5:56- UConn’s Jeff Adrien gets raked across the arm going up for a layup - just a regular basketball play - and flails with his off-arm, sparking a small shoving match.
Having just been told that VitaminWater is the official hydration partner of NCAA championships is a reminder of how depressingly corporate the NCAA is. When I was in Philly for the games two weeks back, you couldn’t take a cup into the arena unless it carried the logo of VitaminWater. There was a Pepsi machine in the corridor around the media area, far from public view, and they covered the thing up because the Dance is a Coke event. I heard that when F&M hosted D-3 regionals last month, labels had to be peeled off water bottles in the interview area, lest a non-hydration partner water brand appear on a local TV camera or something….
6:12- MSU leads 38-36 at the half… it has gotten nothing from Goran Suton, who lit up Louisville, but freshman guard Korie Lucious, averaging 2.9 a game, has 11, as does junior F Raymar Morgan.
UConn blocks more shots than anybody - having led the country five straight years or something - and famously does so without fouling. But I’m not sure the Huskies are real strong on-the-ground defenders. The Spartans have been able to beat them down the floor at times, beat them to the glass, and cause from problems for them with screen/roll type stuff. Look for pick-and-pops with Suton in the second half.
Not ready to say MSU’s in control, though. It was a good, high-level first half.
I’m pretty sure you have to be drunk to make a beer commercial. Little-known industry rule.
7:55- Izzo’s teams always rebound- they have 14 o-boards in 32 minutes against a gigantic team…. I’ve never noticed this Draymond Green before… He’s built like Tre Thomas but he’s slugging away. Now he hits a jumper to put his team up eight. Kellogg: “Make music big fella!”
UConn plays with this cool NBA vibe. It’s not working. The Huskies are just getting outscrapped…
7:59- CBS shows Jud Heathcote (God love him) sitting in front of Magic, but Friend of Izzo Steve Mariucci, in front of Heathcote, goes unnoticed….
8:04- Spartans now up 10, and UConn looks flustered and beat, although that can change fast. This might be the time to point out that in December, North Carolina beat MSU by 35 (and it honestly wasn’t that close) in the same building they’re playing in now. I think Villanova, who won’t get outfought, can beat Michigan State, and I know North Carolina can….
8:06- Nantz and Kellogg launch into a cloying and deceptive defense of Jim Calhoun re the current NCAA difficulties. And before that, I thought they were having a good night.
8:11- UConn has just had four consecutive possessions in which they passed the ball once. That’s once total, combined, and the pass led to a dunk. MSU is tough, but the Huskies have just not risen to this occasion….
8:16- UConn gets a driving basket plus a foul on Suton for clearing out Thabeet. The Huskies have scored seven straight to pull within four. It’s never easy. UConn should have fought like this all night. Excellent call by the way, and one you don’t see much. The refs have been fine.
8:28- UConn actually had a shot at it here down their stretch, but its guards will not pass the ball. Kemba Walker’s a freshman having a freshman night, but A.J. Price hurt his team more than Walker did.
8:35- It’s over, Sparty to the final, richly deserved.
MSU 82, UConn 73. More numbers: UConn somehow had more rebounds, 41-40. That goes into the deceptive stat annals. Spartans didn’t shoot that well, but had just 11 turnovers. Raymar Morgan goes for 18 and 9, Kalin Lucas for 21 and five assists. The more glaring numbers are on the UConn side- Stanley Robinson, who’s emerged in the tournament as perhaps the Huskies’ best player, had 15 and 13, but got exactly six shots at the basket (he shot 5-6 from the field, 4-4 from the line). Part of that was foul trouble, but part of it was the guards not sharing. No drive-and-kick element to UConn’s game. Price, meanwhile, also scored 15, but shot 5-for-20.
That’s it for game one. Back in a half-four for Nova and the Heels.
9:25- We’re back. Carolina up 10-8.
I think this is a bad matchup for Nova. The Wildcats are a great defensive team, but their D depends on lots of opponent-specific stuff, funneling the ball here, not letting it go there, etc. It works best against teams that aren’t verastile offensively. UCLA really only had two guys who could score, and Duke only had one way to score.
Carolina will almost always have five guys out there who can score, can score every way you can score, and Ty Lawson is probably the hardest guy in the country to stop from getting the ball where he wants.
Chevrolet tells us, meaning America, to put on our rally caps and dig in. Also: Give us lots and lots of government money.
Couls be worse, of course. Recall, “This is our couunntttryy..”
9:39- Nova down 12, but making a little run as I write this. The Cats have to get fast-break points. They aren’t a good enough half-court offensive team.
9:45- Scottie Reynolds makes a three, Nova’s first in eight tries. They’re down eight. Not for long, though. You just can’t disrupt the Heels. You have to play very straight, five-player man-to-man, and Nova just isn’t built that way.
It’s 38-23, and its hard to see how it can turn around, although it’s also hard to overstate the fight in the Wildcats.
I have no problem with baggy shorts, but Villanova’s wearing capri pants.
9:58- Scottie Reynolds has two fouls, and the game seems a little too quick for him. He’s going to have real problems at the next level.
On the other hand, everybody who has to chase Lawson around has problems. He’s been talked about so much all winter that at one point I thought he was a bit overrated. He isn’t. When you see these games in person from up close you’re always struck by how fast and physical the game is, and Lawson goes through all of it to get the ball where it needs to go, and almost never makes a mistake - he’s made two turnovers in the tournament. That’s incredibly hard to do. Rajon Rondo is the low end for Lawson as a pro, it says here.
10:11- It’s halftime, Nova above water at 49-40. Stranger things have happened.
10:36- I don’t understand how or why, but Nova has scratched to within five.
They really are beating the crap out of Tyler Hansbrough, and getting away with it. Hansbrough just had a clean layup with Reggie Redding standing directly under the basket and getting the charge call. Then the Heels run off five straight.
10:56- Nova has managed to get the ragged game it needs of late, but you still have to put the ball in the hole- at one point they missed 11 straight shots, many of them languishing on the rim before falling off. Heels are up 13.
11:05- The Wildcats can’t throw it in the ocean from the pier, and this game and this blog are losing some steam.
Monday night should be cool. Remember that at the Final Four, fans of the semifinal losers tend to sell their tickets are clear out of town. Those tickets figure to be scarfed up by, of course, Michigan State fans. You could have a national championship game with one team having 60,000 fans in the house. Unprecedented. The Heels will have to embrace being the bad guy.
They are the better team, though.
(Of course, Nova rallied a bit as I wrote this, to within 12. And that was in the middle of a stretch where each team had two possessions and there were four, FOUR commercial breaks. I haven’t monitored it exactly, but in the last roughly 15 minutes of real time we’ve seen around 20 commercials, and less than a minute has. gone off the game clock. I mean, come on…)
It’s over. Carolina 83-69.
The broadcast was good. The refs were mostly good. The games were OK. The final should be better
Peace out.
