[The Poet]

If nothing else, it was an interesting day of hoops on Friday, as tons of people had their brackets totally torn apart. Not only did Mizzou and Dook go down, but the Ohio Bobcats knocked Michigan, co-champs of the Big Ten regular season, out of The Dance, while South Florida bulled the Temple Owls out, thus depriving many of one Cinderella pick. But the Tiger and Blue Devil losses in particular point out something that has bothered me for years, and that being the bold statement:


Guards win you championships.


Now, I am not about to denigrate the importance of quality guard play, and the statement is not a total fallacy. Yet I find it a misconception, or at least a flawed perception, for if you don't have some horses down low you are unlikely to survive. Mizzou came into the game touted for their unusual 3-guard offense, which was said to make them difficult to defend. True as that is, it only goes so far. If you've been reading this thread all along, you know how many times I have stated that the Tigers may be good, but they were not as great as the perception of their fans, and even of too many "experts". As for Duke, you can lament that they badly missed injured Kelly, but one thing they missed from this 6'10" player was his outside range, which was hard to defend and which opened up the lane for teammates by stretching the opponent's D. That's well and good, as far as it goes, but a big man is of more value in the paint! Me, I've never been overly impressed with the Plumlees, but last night they were the most effective option Dook had, and those guards did not do enough to get them the damn ball! Even the analysts said that they needed to play inside-out, not outside-in, and that was not only big man Charles Barkley but PG Kenny Smith too. Jet may have feigned backhanding the Round Mound when he spouted the old saw about dying by the three, but he also knows it is the truth.

As I said, good guard play is important. But the most important part of it is not the scoring, but the handling of the ball and the getting of it to the other guys in the right place at the right time. Yesterday Tyler Zeller got his double-double points and rebounds (17&15) in good part because Kendall Marshall did his job. Marshall's 11 points (on 5 for 7 shooting, not the 5 for 20 we saw from some other guards yesterday) was just icing on his 10 assists.

This idea of guards ruling the NCAAs may be sexy, but it does not hold up under tight scrutiny. Every year CBS opens up their pregame with the Michael Jordan shot which gave UNC the lead over Georgetown back in 1982. But nobody seems to talk about James Worthy getting 26 points in that game, nor the fact that the story going in was that Sam Perkins of Carolina could not handle the Hoyas' freshman man-child Patrick Ewing. And speaking of Ewing, it is true he won only one ring, but he did get to 3 championship games. Is that too old a reference for you? Well, let's go back to the last time the undisputed best team in the nation won it all, that being the Tar Heels in 2009. I was proud of the way I was able to handicap all those games, but particularly proud of the way I parsed perhaps the most interesting match-up of that run . . . UNC against upset-minded Oklahoma. Going into it, the experts were saying that Blake Griffin would eat Tyler Hansbrough for lunch, as he was much the superior athlete. I could not dispute the possibility, and agonized over the keys to that contest for a Heel victory to ensue. Finally, I asked myself two questions: "Could Blake have a monster game, yet Oklahoma still lose?" Yes, I decided. "Did Carolina need Tyler to have a monster game to win?" No, I also decided. From that point, I was not worried. If you recall, Blake did have a huge game, while Tyler got only (if I rememeber correctly) only 8 points. The Heels won that game from the outside, with scoring from guys like Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington, and Danny Green. On the surface, this seems to dispute the point I'm trying to make. Yet look at it more closely. Coming into that game, the Sooners knew they had no shot at all without Blake Griffin on the court, and they also knew that Hansbrough was perhaps the best man ever at drawing fouls. So they double-teamed him throughout the game in order to deny him the ball (and thus protect Blake), and triple-teamed him when he did get touches. The result of this was that it left those outside jumpshooters for UNC open looks at good shots, and they took full advantage. But nobody, NOBODY!, seemed to take note of that, despite the fact that, as I had predicted, it was the key to the game.

Bottom line, I am surprised that Duke and Missouri got beaten by Lehigh and Norfolk State respectively. However, I am NOT surprised that they did not make it far in the NCAA Tournament this year. For every Tyus Edney, Bryce Drew, or Stephan Curry hero in the history of the NCAAs, there are 10 or 12 chuckers or fumblers or ballhogs who shoot their teammates in the foot.

I'm off my soapbox now. Let's do some hoops.