Saturday, April 2, 2016
The Terrible Twos: Thoughts on the Final Snore
This is how bad today's Final Four semi-finals were.
A seventeen point North Carolina win over Syracuse actually had moments of feeling like an exciting game. The Tar Heels--who had twice beaten Syracuse in the regular season--clearly had their opponent out-manned. But when the Orange twice managed to close the gap to seven in the middle of the second half, watching college basketball's showcase seemed for a moment to be more exciting than, well, listening to someone snore.
That's what happens when the first game is a record setting blowout: Villanova over Oklahoma, 95-51. In showtime terms, that was not a hard act to follow.
I blogged prior to today's train wreck in Houston that will be conceptualized as a pair of basketball games that the 2015-2016 season has been the worst I've ever seen in thirty plus years of being a college basketball fan. I qualified that statement by admitting that being a UK fan has tainted my outlook on the year's tourney (UK played lousy and lost to Indiana in the second round).
But today's Final Four match-ups did nothing to counter my assessment of play. On the contrary, the lopsided games and horrendous play on the whole by all four teams reinforces my claim that this year is an all-time low.
Villanova is a really good basketball team--one would expect that from any team that makes it to the Final Four--but the idea they are 44 points better than an Oklahoma team that beat them by 23 in December is wacko. What happened in today's first game is that Oklahoma never showed up. The game could have still involved two teams had the Sooners put on a display of functional basketball for more than two consecutive possessions. But that was not going to happen.
Buddy Hield was a non-factor after playing lights out in the regional, especially in the regional final against Oregon. As I mentioned in my previous blog, the locale in Houston did not have a shooter-friendly reputation based on the miserable offensive outputs from the 2011 Final Four participants. While I give Villanova credit for playing good defense, I find it hard to believe that the venue in Houston had nothing to do with Hield turning from lights-out three point marksman to brick-layer in one week.
Again I will say: for a college game where three-point shooting and even free throw shooting are making the game more difficult to watch one season to the next, it doesn't help the quality of play to have the Final Four played in giant domes where no one plays basketball until the biggest games of the college season come around. Never mind the hundreds of large arenas designed and built as basketball stadiums, where crowds would still be enormous and outside shooters wouldn't be looking at a backdrop that looks like the Grand Canyon.
Hield and the Sooners were not the only ones who looked lost this afternoon. At halftime of the second game, UNC and Syracuse were a combined 3-of-20 from long range. The Tar Heels were 0-for-10, yet they still led by eleven at the half. That's how inept and lopsided the second game also was. The Orange made 3-of-10 threes in the first half, but were only 3-of-10 from the free-throw line. In case you want to go on and on about how great the defense was this afternoon let me remind you: no one plays defense on free throws.
Neither game was well played, nor was it competitive, a microcosm of a season characterized by inconsistent play from even the highest ranked teams, and pre-conference schedules by the major programs that loaded up on blowout mismatches that obviously do nothing to add excitement to the game nor provide players and teams the challenges they need to improve from game one and be their best come tournament time. It's as though the season doesn't start until January, and even then conference play has degenerated, as I said previously, into redundant contests and too many predictable outcomes.
So, fine. Villanova played extremely well. They played with energy, hit some threes early, had offensive balance, and took Oklahoma completely out of its game. But no one in their right mind imagined that even with Villanova playing its best the result would look more like what one would expect of a first-round 1 versus 16 seed. Oklahoma's inability to compete fueled the Wildcats' impressive play as much as Villanova made the Sooners look bad. Again, for the basketball game to have been played in a basketball game arena would have helped--hypothetically--an Oklahoma team that relies on perimeter offense, especially from Hield.
But giving all the credit in the world to Villanova can't hide that today's first game was one thing: ugly. The game was incomprehensibly non-competitive. It's brain-racking to wonder how far the quality of play in college basketball has fallen that a team could make it out of an NCAA region and play like it had just been introduced to the game a week earlier. The game was so bad, it was surreal.
The closest to such lopsided results I can remember was in 1990 when an awesome UNLV team blew out Georgia Tech and then a Duke team in the finals that went on to win back-to-back titles in the next two years. So blowouts in Final Fours is not unprecedented. The horrible play and historical non-competitiveness of this afternoon is.
Of course, as a UK fan, I won't duck from the comparison of Oklahoma's performance to UK's horrendous second-half against Georgetown in 1984. But Kentucky actually led that game at halftime, if I'm remembering correctly, and still seemed to have a chance to win until the game got in the final minutes. In any case, it wasn't a 40-minute, 44-point thrashing. At least that UK team waited until the second half to disappear.
As for the victorious Tar Heels, they controlled a game in which it wasn't until less than seven minutes remained that they managed to hit a three-pointer. It's hard to believe that in any other season against any other opponent that that kind of cold streak from three wouldn't have meant the team's doom. But it's fitting for this season that UNC could shoot bricks nearly the entire game and it never felt for a moment they would lose. After the Tar Heels' Marcus Paige finally connected for a three, his team did find some rhythm from behind the arc, snuffing out whatever remote chance Syracuse had of repeating its comeback effort against Virginia last weekend.
Speaking of, it is also fitting that a couple of days ago Gonzaga coach Mark Few announced that officials admitted they blew a 10-second backcourt violation call against the Zags that contributed to their late-game meltdown against Syracuse, who benefited from that officiating fuck-up to pull out a one-point win. Gonzaga may have lost anyway--but as all sports fans know, one never wants to see a bad call late in a game turn out to be a pivotal factor in the outcome. What's too bad is that Gonzaga had been playing extremely well--shooting the ball well from the three-point range and hitting their free throws, so it is somehow fitting--in a twisted way--that bad officiating had to derail them from at least making the regional final, in which case either they or Virginia would have had a chance to take on UNC. Such a matchup would have been more competitive than today's second act--I guess. Who knows. The only reliable aspect of this year's season and NCAA tournament have been lopsided games and poor play.
In any case, while I'm bitching about everything else, I may as well point out that the average ten minute delay in games so the refs can look at monitor replays to determine how much time should be on the shot clock with 38 minutes to go in the first half or whether or not a hard foul is intentional or flagrant, it was not within their power to review a call that might have cost Gonzaga a chance to play for a Final Four birth. If we're going to have a shitty season, let's let everyone get in on it.
Oh--wait, yeah. The alarm clock in my head went off and I remember I can't end a blog like this without a prediction for the final. And since in my previous log I said Oklahoma would actually win the whole thing, I will include myself in the matrix of college basketball ineptitude. With that disclaimer, it's hard to tell if Villanova was that good or Oklahoma that bad. But a team that wins by 44 points is my favorite over a team that didn't hit a three until late in the second half against a team that very well wouldn't have been there had they not benefited from the worst call of the tournament. So my guess is that UNC is too one-dimensional for a Villanova team that beat a very talented Kansas team and proceeded to make OU look historically bad. I hope to see a well-played, competitive game. Maybe Villanova wins such a game, and sets college basketball back on track for next season. Maybe.
A seventeen point North Carolina win over Syracuse actually had moments of feeling like an exciting game. The Tar Heels--who had twice beaten Syracuse in the regular season--clearly had their opponent out-manned. But when the Orange twice managed to close the gap to seven in the middle of the second half, watching college basketball's showcase seemed for a moment to be more exciting than, well, listening to someone snore.
That's what happens when the first game is a record setting blowout: Villanova over Oklahoma, 95-51. In showtime terms, that was not a hard act to follow.
I blogged prior to today's train wreck in Houston that will be conceptualized as a pair of basketball games that the 2015-2016 season has been the worst I've ever seen in thirty plus years of being a college basketball fan. I qualified that statement by admitting that being a UK fan has tainted my outlook on the year's tourney (UK played lousy and lost to Indiana in the second round).
But today's Final Four match-ups did nothing to counter my assessment of play. On the contrary, the lopsided games and horrendous play on the whole by all four teams reinforces my claim that this year is an all-time low.
Villanova is a really good basketball team--one would expect that from any team that makes it to the Final Four--but the idea they are 44 points better than an Oklahoma team that beat them by 23 in December is wacko. What happened in today's first game is that Oklahoma never showed up. The game could have still involved two teams had the Sooners put on a display of functional basketball for more than two consecutive possessions. But that was not going to happen.
Buddy Hield was a non-factor after playing lights out in the regional, especially in the regional final against Oregon. As I mentioned in my previous blog, the locale in Houston did not have a shooter-friendly reputation based on the miserable offensive outputs from the 2011 Final Four participants. While I give Villanova credit for playing good defense, I find it hard to believe that the venue in Houston had nothing to do with Hield turning from lights-out three point marksman to brick-layer in one week.
Again I will say: for a college game where three-point shooting and even free throw shooting are making the game more difficult to watch one season to the next, it doesn't help the quality of play to have the Final Four played in giant domes where no one plays basketball until the biggest games of the college season come around. Never mind the hundreds of large arenas designed and built as basketball stadiums, where crowds would still be enormous and outside shooters wouldn't be looking at a backdrop that looks like the Grand Canyon.
Hield and the Sooners were not the only ones who looked lost this afternoon. At halftime of the second game, UNC and Syracuse were a combined 3-of-20 from long range. The Tar Heels were 0-for-10, yet they still led by eleven at the half. That's how inept and lopsided the second game also was. The Orange made 3-of-10 threes in the first half, but were only 3-of-10 from the free-throw line. In case you want to go on and on about how great the defense was this afternoon let me remind you: no one plays defense on free throws.
Neither game was well played, nor was it competitive, a microcosm of a season characterized by inconsistent play from even the highest ranked teams, and pre-conference schedules by the major programs that loaded up on blowout mismatches that obviously do nothing to add excitement to the game nor provide players and teams the challenges they need to improve from game one and be their best come tournament time. It's as though the season doesn't start until January, and even then conference play has degenerated, as I said previously, into redundant contests and too many predictable outcomes.
So, fine. Villanova played extremely well. They played with energy, hit some threes early, had offensive balance, and took Oklahoma completely out of its game. But no one in their right mind imagined that even with Villanova playing its best the result would look more like what one would expect of a first-round 1 versus 16 seed. Oklahoma's inability to compete fueled the Wildcats' impressive play as much as Villanova made the Sooners look bad. Again, for the basketball game to have been played in a basketball game arena would have helped--hypothetically--an Oklahoma team that relies on perimeter offense, especially from Hield.
But giving all the credit in the world to Villanova can't hide that today's first game was one thing: ugly. The game was incomprehensibly non-competitive. It's brain-racking to wonder how far the quality of play in college basketball has fallen that a team could make it out of an NCAA region and play like it had just been introduced to the game a week earlier. The game was so bad, it was surreal.
The closest to such lopsided results I can remember was in 1990 when an awesome UNLV team blew out Georgia Tech and then a Duke team in the finals that went on to win back-to-back titles in the next two years. So blowouts in Final Fours is not unprecedented. The horrible play and historical non-competitiveness of this afternoon is.
Of course, as a UK fan, I won't duck from the comparison of Oklahoma's performance to UK's horrendous second-half against Georgetown in 1984. But Kentucky actually led that game at halftime, if I'm remembering correctly, and still seemed to have a chance to win until the game got in the final minutes. In any case, it wasn't a 40-minute, 44-point thrashing. At least that UK team waited until the second half to disappear.
As for the victorious Tar Heels, they controlled a game in which it wasn't until less than seven minutes remained that they managed to hit a three-pointer. It's hard to believe that in any other season against any other opponent that that kind of cold streak from three wouldn't have meant the team's doom. But it's fitting for this season that UNC could shoot bricks nearly the entire game and it never felt for a moment they would lose. After the Tar Heels' Marcus Paige finally connected for a three, his team did find some rhythm from behind the arc, snuffing out whatever remote chance Syracuse had of repeating its comeback effort against Virginia last weekend.
Speaking of, it is also fitting that a couple of days ago Gonzaga coach Mark Few announced that officials admitted they blew a 10-second backcourt violation call against the Zags that contributed to their late-game meltdown against Syracuse, who benefited from that officiating fuck-up to pull out a one-point win. Gonzaga may have lost anyway--but as all sports fans know, one never wants to see a bad call late in a game turn out to be a pivotal factor in the outcome. What's too bad is that Gonzaga had been playing extremely well--shooting the ball well from the three-point range and hitting their free throws, so it is somehow fitting--in a twisted way--that bad officiating had to derail them from at least making the regional final, in which case either they or Virginia would have had a chance to take on UNC. Such a matchup would have been more competitive than today's second act--I guess. Who knows. The only reliable aspect of this year's season and NCAA tournament have been lopsided games and poor play.
In any case, while I'm bitching about everything else, I may as well point out that the average ten minute delay in games so the refs can look at monitor replays to determine how much time should be on the shot clock with 38 minutes to go in the first half or whether or not a hard foul is intentional or flagrant, it was not within their power to review a call that might have cost Gonzaga a chance to play for a Final Four birth. If we're going to have a shitty season, let's let everyone get in on it.
Oh--wait, yeah. The alarm clock in my head went off and I remember I can't end a blog like this without a prediction for the final. And since in my previous log I said Oklahoma would actually win the whole thing, I will include myself in the matrix of college basketball ineptitude. With that disclaimer, it's hard to tell if Villanova was that good or Oklahoma that bad. But a team that wins by 44 points is my favorite over a team that didn't hit a three until late in the second half against a team that very well wouldn't have been there had they not benefited from the worst call of the tournament. So my guess is that UNC is too one-dimensional for a Villanova team that beat a very talented Kansas team and proceeded to make OU look historically bad. I hope to see a well-played, competitive game. Maybe Villanova wins such a game, and sets college basketball back on track for next season. Maybe.
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