Putting UConn's Run in Perspective

Many have said that Connecticut's run to the Big East title -- five wins in five nights in the nation's toughest conference -- was harder than winning the NCAA Tournament. As regards to timing, at least, that's definitely true -- whoever wins this thing will have their six (or seven) games spread over three weeks.

What about substantively? It's certainly possible that the road to Houston will be no tougher for the Huskies than the one that brought them the Big East trophy.

Throwing away DePaul -- the hapless Blue Demons are no match for even UConn's first round opponent, the Patriot League-champion Bucknell Bison -- UConn beat Georgetown, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, and Louisville at Madison Square Garden.

The Hoyas are a six seed in the Big Dance; the Panthers are a one; the Orange, a three; the Cardinals, a four. UConn's a three-seed, so if the tournament goes according to chalk (it never does, but for purposes of this little exercise, let's assume it does), UConn would need to beat a six (Cincinnati, who they beat on the road at the end of February), a two (San Diego State) and two ones (Duke and Ohio State) in addition to Bucknell to reach the national championship game. Throw in an upset here or there, though, and it could be really comparable.

Of course, UConn is by no means a lock to win even their first round game. They are the classic example of a team that over-achieves late in the season, is everyone's "hot" pick to go to the Final Four, then bows out in an early round (Georgetown last year is actually a pretty good example of this).

Political blogger Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com recently wrote a post about similar teams. He used UConn's Big East foe Notre Dame as an example of a team that received no attention at the beginning of the year but that has played its way to a very good seed in this year's tournament. He could easily have used Connecticut as his example; like Notre Dame, the Huskies were unranked to start the season (though they did receive eight votes in the preseason poll). Silver looked at 41 teams who had started the season unranked and entered the tournament ranked in the AP top ten, and found that as a group, they under-performed their expectations by a fairly significant margin (the post is interesting; I suggest you check it out for details).

As of this writing, I don't know where UConn will end up in Monday's writer's poll. They're an interesting case, however. They didn't work their way up in the rankings throughout the season like most teams do. Rather, they leapt into the top ten in November after winning the Maui Invitational in November as an unranked team. They got as high as No. 4 before losing to Pittsburgh in late December, and spent most of the rest of the season ranked somewhere in the teens. Two losses to end the regular season put UConn on the verge of slipping out of the top 25 entirely; they started the Big East Tournament ranked 21st.

It's hard to say how their somewhat unique path will affect anything discussed above. On the one hand, they seem to exhibit all the symptoms of one of these early-round upset victims. On the other, they have now twice shown the ability to beat good teams in a tournament situation -- they beat Wichita State, then-No. 2 Michigan State, and then-No. 8 Kentucky in Maui. The X-factor may be Kemba Walker; he's capable of carrying the Huskies by himself against almost anyone. I personally think the draw opens up pretty well for them, but I'm wary of picking them given the history of these kinds of teams.

Michigan State Advances to Final

I actually don't want to talk much about the game - I may post a bit about it in some sort of a championship preview between now and Monday night - but I do want to briefly talk about what I thought was a coaching error on the part of Connecticut's Jim Calhoun down the stretch in Saturday's first national semifinal.

Trailing by 11 points with less than 1:54 to go, the Huskies put on a furious full-court press. Several Spartan mistakes and 46 seconds later, Connecticut small forward Stanley Robinson found himself hanging from the rim, his thunderous jam following an A.J. Price miss having brought his team to within 74-71.

The momentum of the game had certainly shifted. More importantly, the circumstances of the game had shifted. Down just a possession, Connecticut no longer needed a steal or a quick foul. They needed a stop. And that need would best be filled not by the scrambling, high-risk, full-court pressure that had brought them back in the game, but by a solid possession of half-court defense.

But college kids are college kids, and this is the game's biggest stage, and after all, just seconds ago, it appeared that their national championship dreams were over. They can be forgiven for getting caught up in the moment and not recognizing this right away.

It's harder to excuse Calhoun. Perhaps he expected his counterpart at Michigan State, Tom Izzo, to call one, and didn't want to burn his final timeout unnecessarily. Perhaps he thought the Spartans were sufficiently rattled and didn't want to give them a chance to calm down. Or perhaps he, too, got caught up in the moment.

Whatever the reason, Calhoun didn't call timeout, and neither did Izzo, and the results were disastrous for Connecticut. MSU's Durrell Summers broke free from the frantic Connecticut press, and freshman Kemba Walker, desperate to stop an easy layup, got to Summers a moment too late. Summers got the basket and the foul, made the free throw, and it was pretty much over at that point.

Calhoun may have been nervous about entering the final 60 seconds of a one-possession game without a timeout, but it's hard to see what he was saving his final stoppage for; by the time he called it, Michigan State led 80-73 and there were 30 seconds left. That one possession was the most important of the game and required a substantial strategy shift, and Calhoun needed to call his final timeout there, whatever the consequences.

Sweet 16 Breakdown: West and East

A lot of people lament the lack of upsets in an NCAA Tournament, and I agree that upsets are a big part of what makes it March Madness. But like last year, the first year in which all four No. 1 seeds reached the Final Four, the chalkiness of this year's Big Dance means we're in store for some great basketball over the next few weeks. The barrier broken this year is that it's the first tournament in which the top three seeds in each of the four regions survived the first weekend. There's really only one somewhat surprising team in the Sweet Sixteen (though yours truly's bracket correctly had them advancing), and Arizona, being more or less a basketball power over the last couple of decades, is hardly the dictionary definition of Cinderella.

WEST
#1 Connecticut vs. #5 Purdue. I had Washington here in Purdue's spot and am a little surprised at how well the Boilers played at times during the tourney's first weekend. They were a highly ranked team early in the year, however, before injuries hit Robbie Hummel, so perhaps this is just them living up to expectations.

Either way, I don't think they have enough to beat Connecticut. I don't think the Huskies are unbeatable, but I think that the team to beat them needs to have a very strong post player. Hasheem Thabeet dominates most opponents defensively, but is a bit of a shrinking violet when faced with an opposing post player of above-average caliber. (Witness his pedestrian performances against Pittsburgh and Georgetown this year.) Purdue doesn't have that trait.

#2 Memphis vs. #3 Missouri. I haven't seen much of Mizzou this year -- to the point where, late in the season, I looked at the rankings and exclaimed, incredulously, "Missouri is ranked tenth?!?!?" I know that they like to play up-and-down, they are deep, and they can score points in bunches. Memphis is like that, too, however, and in addition to being more talented and deep than Mizzou, they are also better defensively. That gives them the edge in what will be a frantic affair.

EAST
#1 Pittsburgh v. #4 Xavier. I picked North Carolina to win it all this year, mainly because I picked them at the beginning of the year and I see flaws with all the other contenders. Carolina has its flaws, too, including my pet flaw, the one that had me ranting all last year, which is that they don't play enough defense to win a championship. In large part due to my regret for selling myself out like that, then, I was remorseful for my selection and began convincing myself that Pittsburgh was the team to beat this year. Then they go out and barely squeak by East Tennessee State and a better-than-you-thought Oklahoma State team in the tournament's first weekend.

Ironically, I think Pitt's defense isn't quite good enough to make me confident that they'll win. It's ironic for two reasons: one, because that's why I'm not confident in my Carolina pick; and two, because defense was Pitt's calling card when they rose to national prominence under Ben Howland (now the head man at UCLA -- which had defensive problems of its own in getting pasted by Villanova in the second round). Because of that reputation, and because head coach Jamie Dixon was a Howland assistant, I think recent vintages of Panthers have gotten underserved reputations as good defensive teams. In fact, I think -- with no statistical backup -- that each successive edition of Pitt under Dixon has been a little bit worse defensively than the previous one.

It follows, then, that I don't think all that highly of this Pitt team defensively, and that is going to be a problem against any solid team, which means it's going to be a problem against any team left in this tournament. I don't know enough about Xavier to say if the Muskies are the team that will take the Panthers out, but I do know that I won't be terribly surprised if it happens.

#2 Duke v. #3 Villanova. This is the matchup I'm most looking forward to, a couple of guard-oriented teams with a star forward who can score inside (Kyle Singler for Duke, Dante Cunningham for Villanova). Both teams rely heavily on the three-point shot, and both have capable but limited role players up front (I give the advantage to Nova here). Duke is perhaps one player deeper in the backcourt and on the wing.

A lot of people would give the coaching advantage to Duke's legendary Coach K, but that does an injustice to Nova head man Jay Wright. Wright has had the same kind of team he has this year in previous years, and he has had great success in the past -- coming within a missed traveling call of upsetting eventual champion North Carolina in 2005, running into a juggernaut on a roll -- a juggernaut on a roll that was a particularly bad matchup for Nova's guard-oriented team -- in Florida the following year. Wright is every bit the coach Coach K is.

This game is really a tossup. If one team shoots well and the other doesn't, it'll prevail. (Duh.) If both teams shoot well, it could easily be "last possession wins." If neither team shoots well, it's a tossup. Both teams have guys who can get to the bucket and finish (Gerald Henderson and Nolan Smith for Duke; Corey Fisher and Scottie Reynolds for Villanova), which is imperative when the jumper isn't falling. It may come down to something like free throws, in which case I guess I like Duke by a thin margin, as I think Singler is better at drawing fouls than Cunningham and the officials always seem to send Duke to the line more than their opponents.

Pittsburgh 76, Connecticut 68

A whole month without posts in the middle of the season? Inexcusable, though I'll try: law school and my NBA blog are taking up most of my time. I'll try to do better down the stretch. And what better way to get back into it than a matchup of top-five teams battling for Big East supremacy?

The big story from this one lay in the stat lines from Pittsburgh's DeJuan Blair and Connecticut's Hasheem Thabeet: 22 points and 23 rebounds for the former; five points and four rebounds for the latter. Complete domination of the matchup from start to finish, starting with Blair flipping Thabeet onto his back, professional wrestling style, early in the game (highlights here).

I'm not willing to go as far as to say that that play set the tone for the evening, but it certainly summed up the matchup between this two well-regarded big men. Blair was tougher and stronger (and better) than Thabeet all night, capping the evening with a game-sealing block of Thabeet - a "stuff," really, with Blair essentially ripping the ball out of Thabeet's hands.

The ESPN highlight reel linked above focuses almost exclusively on the Blair-Thabeet matchup, and if you watch it, you'll see a diverse offensive arsenal from Blair that I frankly didn't know he had. Jump hook, turnaround jumper, lefty layin after a drop step. Even the one time Thabeet got the best of him, blocking an ill-advised fadeaway, Blair retrieved the ball and went right at Thabeet, driving into the land before stepping through for lefty layup. And the foul.

Another thing I hadn't seen before from Blair was his outlet passing. He threw at least three terrific outlet passes last night, including the one at the end of the highlight that followed his block of Thabeet.

Finally, I was very impressed by his conditioning. He's 6'7", 265, which is a lot of DeJuan Blair to be carrying up and down the court for 38 minutes. But that's how many minutes he did play, a game high, and he wasn't exactly just going through the motions out there. These were 38 minutes of rebounding and jumping and battling for position; 38 minutes of work. Blair is short for his position, which means he has to rely more on strength than a taller man would. Blair exerted himself for nearly the whole game, and was still fresh enough to register that block on Thabeet in the closing minute.

As for Thabeet, he seems like a consensus lottery pick, and while it's hard to quibble with his height and weakside shot-blocking ability, particularly in what should be a relatively shallow draft, I'm just not sure. I've now twice watched him be completely neutralized and outplayed by an opposing big man (December vs. Greg Monroe and Georgetown is the other), and while he had a respectable nine points and 11 rebounds against Notre Dame, it's worth noting that Luke Harangody had 24 and 15 for the Irish.

It just seems like every time Thabeet goes up against somebody halfway decent, he gets shown up. Sure, he can put up 25 and 20 with nine blocks against Seton Hall like he did the other day, but so what? The competiton in the pros is going to be tougher than it is now.

As far as Connecticut goes generally, losing Jerome Dyson for the year with a knee injury obviously hurts their depth, but anything that gives freshman Kemba Walker more court time can't be all bad. I really like this kid. Lightning-quick, good passer, plays within himself. With Walker, A.J. Price, and Craig Austrie, the Huskies should get plenty of production from their backcourt.

As for Pittsburgh: I'm impressed. Sam Young's a lot better than I thought he was, and I've grudgingly come to accept that if Levance Fields is not an elite point guard, he is the kind of point guard you can win a championship with. Takes care of the ball and steps up when it matters (witness the two threes he hit down the stretch last night -- his first two made field goals of the game.) I also think that the Panthers are better defensively than they have been in recent years. Pitt, of course, had a strong defensive reputation under Ben Howland, and when Howland left for UCLA and his assistant Jamie Dixon took over, that reputation carried over. But it seemed like Pitt's defense had actually gotten worse each of the past several years, as though the emphasis on defense decreased the more time elapsed between Howland and the program. They seem better on that end this year. Maybe that will translate to some March success.

Opening Night in the Big East

The Georgetown-Connecticut game marked the opening of ESPN's Monday night Big East coverage, although not technically the beginning of the weekly tripleheaders dubbed these many years Big Monday. The Big East is incredibly deep this year, with eight teams currently ranked in the ESPN/USAToday poll and a ninth -- West Virginia -- just two spots out of it after dismantling previously unbeaten Ohio State in Columbus on Saturday. (The AP poll has seven Big East teams in the top 25, though Marquette and West Virginia are Nos. 26 and 27, respectively). It's just going to be a fantastic season, with ten tournament bids a real possibility.

ESPN's Andy Katz wrote a nice breakdown of the conference, and he makes the point that if the league wants to get ten teams in, it won't be enough for those ten to get to 8-10 by virtue of beating the bottom six teams in the league (likely to be Rutgers, South Florida, Seton Hall, Providence, St. John's, and DePaul) seven or eight times. They'll need at least a couple of wins against each other.

For similar reasons, these non-conference games that are wrapping up (with a few exceptions) this week take on an increased importance in a year where the conference is so stacked. Let's take a look at the ten realistic contenders for tournament bids from the Big East, and see what their non-conference slates look like. I'll take them in the same order Katz did.

Cincinnati: The Bearcats 60-45 loss at Memphis (after the Tigers dropped out of the Top 25 for the first time in a few years) hurts, particularly since fellow Big East foes Georgetown and Syracuse have already beaten last year's national runners-up. Losing to Xavier is nothing to be ashamed of, though dropping a game to Florida State hurts. Still, they have wins at UNLV and against Mississippi State and UAB, so they're in decent shape at 3-3 against potential tournament teams from major conferences.

Connecticut: The Huskies will be fine, provided that they don't make their listless performance against Georgetown a habit. Victories over Miami (FL) and Wisconsin on their way to winning Paradise Jam, along with a win over Gonzaga in Seattle gives them a nice non-conference slate. They can get some insurance, not that they'll need it, on February 7, when they host Michigan (and old foe John Beilein, the former head coach at West Virginia).

Georgetown: Beating Maryland and Memphis more than offsets losing to Tennessee in a very hard-fought game at the Old Spice Classic in November. Given that the Hoyas already have a huge conference road win, they're in fine shape. Like UConn, they have one more out-of-conference test, January 17 at Duke.

Louisville: The Cardinals have a couple of really troubling losses, to Western Kentucky and Minnesota. They rebounded a couple of days ago with a convincing win over UAB, but the Blazers are down to something like six scholarship players, so that victory doesn't look as good as it might have at the beginning of the year. They don't have any other good wins, but they do have two more opportunities to make life easier for them once their conference slate starts. They play UNLV on New Year's Eve at 6 p.m. Eastern, and given that Cincinnati has already beaten the Rebels this year, the Ville could very well have to win that one to avoid needing to be better than .500 in Big East play -- which is more doable for them than it is for others, since they have seven games against the league's bottom six and only get the league's true heavies -- Pittsburgh, UConn, and Georgetown -- once each. They've also got Kentucky on January 4, and although the Wildcats beat West Virginia earlier this year, UK might be the kind of team where a loss to them looks worse than a win over them looks good, if you get what I'm saying.

Marquette: The Golden Eagles have a couple of decent wins against Wisconsin and North Carolina State, a good loss against Tennessee, and then kind of a bad loss to Dayton. That's not really anything to be ashamed of, but Marquette is done in non-conference play, and they're right on the fringe of the top 25 right now. What's more, they finish up with a wicked schedule. Check out this five-game stretch to finish up Big East play: at Georgetown, vs. Connecticut, at Louisville, at Pittsburgh, vs. Syracuse. Brutal. Given the emphasis the selection committee seems to put on the way a team is playing heading into the tournament, Marquette may not have done enough out of conference to survive losing four out of five to end the season, followed by an early exit in the Big East tournament. They haven't made things impossible for themselves, but they are going to have to play awfully well to feel comfortable on Selection Sunday. That loss to Dayton could loom large.

Notre Dame: The Fighting Irish nipped Texas by a point in the Maui semis, lost to Carolina in the final, and slipped up against Ohio State in Indianapolis in Luke Harangody's first game back after missing two with pneumonia. They are fine barring a major collapse in conference play, though a win at UCLA on February 7would certainly help.

Pittsburgh: No one win really jumps out at you. They won at Florida State, but beating the Seminoles, even in Tallahassee, is hardly the kind of win a team hangs it hat on. They beat Texas Tech and Washington State on consecutive nights in November in New Jersey, but I just watched the Cougars play terribly in a loss to LSU, and the Red Raiders lost to Lamar earlier this year and got beat by 45 at Stanford their last time out. Still, they've taken care of business, and honestly should be good enough in the Big East that their non-conference schedule won't matter. Incidentally, they are not quite done with out of conference opponents, as they've oddly scheduled a home date with Robert Morris for February 2.

Syracuse: Losing to Cleveland State at the Carrier Dome wasn't good, but for the first time in a couple of years, the Orange have done quite a lot in the non-conference. Beating Florida and Kansas back-to-back in Kansas City to win the CBE Classic was big, and they added a big win at Memphis on December 20. These teams aren't the same squads that are responsible for the last three national championships (and one national runnerup-ship), but they are good wins over name teams away from home. Syracuse just needs to stay the course in the Big East to get a bid.

Villanova: No bad losses for the Wildcats, their lone blemish being a nine-point defeat at the hands of Texas, then ranked No. 6. No spectacular wins, either. Monday's 62-45 win over Temple looks good if you consider that the Owls beat Tennessee on December 13; it becomes less impressive when you realize that Temple then lost to Long Beach State, and had previously lost to Buffalo and Miami (OH). Katz says that a November 19 triumph over Niagara is 'Nova's most meaningful win, which isn't likely to get too many people that excited about the Wildcats. They're out of non-conference opportunities, but have climbed high enough in the polls that something like .500 in the Big East should get them there.

West Virginia: It would have been nice to beat Kentucky and Davidson, but the aforementioned trouncing of Ohio State in Columbus this weekend makes up for a lot of that. The Mountaineers have two games against each of Louisville and Pittsburgh, which is tough, but it cuts both ways: It can just as easily be seen as two extra opportunities for a big resume win as it can be seen as an extra two automatic losses in conference.

Have a good New Year, all.

Georgetown 74, Connecticut 63

I was expecting a bit better from this one.

Still, the night wasn't a complete bust, as I got my first real look at Georgetown's 6'9" freshman, Greg Monroe. What a player! He thoroughly outplayed his much bigger, much older, much more highly-touted counterpart on the Huskies, Hasheem Thabeet.

Monroe made his impact felt early, scoring or assisting on each of the Hoyas' first six baskets. Consider this sequence from the games opening minutes:

18:10 - Monroe threads a backdoor pass to Austin Freeman for the first two points of the game.
17:09 - After a UConn miss, offensive rebound, and turnover, Monroe hits Freeman backdoor again for a 4-0 lead. He didn't get an assist on this one, but he should have.
16:57 - Monroe rebounds Jeff Adrien's missed free throw.
16:21 - After a Hoya turnover and a Thabeet missed jam, Monroe find DaJuan Summers for a three and a 7-1 lead.
16:08 - Guarding UConn point guard A.J. Price on the perimeter, Monroe pokes the ball free, picks it up, takes it to the bucket...
16:05 - ...and makes the layup while being fouled by Price.
16:05 - Monroe misses the free throw. Hey, no one's perfect.
15:42 - Monroe fights around Thabeet and knocks away an entry pass from Stanley Robinson.
15:24 - Monroe assists on another triple by Summers. 12-1.
15:04 - Robinson misses a jumper. Monroe allows Summers to grab the rebound.
14:46 - Monroe drills a three-pointer from the top of the key off a pass from Summers, staking the Hoyas to a 15-1 lead.

So Monroe, playing his first Big East game, on the road against the undefeated second-ranked team in the country basically took over for three-and-a-half minutes. Granted, he didn't keep up that ridiculous pace, finishing with a rather modest line: 16 points, four rebounds, four assists, three steals. Three of those credited assists came in the first six minutes, as did two of the steals, and his rebound numbers are low because he picked up his third foul just 80 seconds into the second half and John Thompson III subbed him out for defense and in for offense for most of the next 12 minutes or so.

Because of Monroe's height, length, and smoothness, and the fact that he shoots with the same hand that Satan does, I suppose comparisons to the Los Angeles Lakers' Lamar Odom are inevitable. But that's who he reminded me of most, particularly when he drove across the lane and threw in a six-foot running hook off the glass over Thabeet. He is a great fit for Georgetown's Princeton-style offense, given that he can pass and hit the jumper, but he also can play with his back to the basket: In the first half, he caught the ball in the lane, threw a quick fake over his left shoulder, then went, without hesitation, to a little baby hook over Thabeet. He's playing center for the Hoyas this year, but at 6'10", he projects more as a four and it looks like he could be mobile enough to play a little three, at least offensively.

I'm really excited to watch this guy for the rest of the year. ESPN has him at noon Eastern this Saturday, January 3, when the Hoyas take on third-ranked (soon to be second-ranked, if they beat Georgetown) Pittsburgh.